• sojourn •
Pronunciation: so-jêrn • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Verb, noun
Meaning: 1. (Verb) To reside temporarily. 2. (Noun) A temporary stay or residence, a long visit.
Notes: This word is far too lovely to be teetering on the brink of extinction. It comes with a family of lexical derivations, like sojourner "some who sojourns" and sojournment "the action of sojourning".
In Play: We hear the verb in expressions like: "Lance Sterling always sojourns a week at the shore in the summer." The crucial thing about this word is that the visit or residence is temporary: "After his five-year sojourn in the Far East, he had pretty good control of Mandarin Chinese." Isabella Baumfree, an outspoken and well-spoken feminist and former slave in the 19th century, changed her name to Sojourner Truth.
Word History: English borrowed today's Good Word from Old French sojourner "to stay or dwell for a time". Old French remodeled Vulgar (street) Latin subdiurnare "to spend the day" to create its word. The Vulgar Latin word is composed of sub "under, below" + diurnare "to last long", from Classical Latin diurnus "of a day, by day". Latin created this word from PIE dyeu- "to shine", which also went into the making of Sanskrit deva "god" and diva "day", Greek delos "clear", Latin dies "day" and deus "god", Breton deiz "day", Irish dhia "god", Welsh diw "god" and didd "day", Czech den "day", Polish dzień "day", Russian den' "day", Serbian dan "day", Armenian tiw "day", Albanian ditë "day", Lithuanian dievas "god", Latvian dievs "god", Hindi din "day" and deva "god", Bengali dina "day", Gujarati divasa "day", and Malayalam daivam "god" and divasam "day". (Now let's pay another debt of gratitude to grandmaster of GW suggestions Albert Skiles for yet another beautiful Good Word.)
P.S. - Register for the Daily Good Word E-Mail! - You can get our daily Good Word sent directly to you via e-mail in either HTML or Text format. Go to our Registration Page to sign up today!
