New Word Thursday: apricity

The Midwest — my personal environs — experienced some of its first truly winter-like weather of the season this week, including snow, ice, school delays, and idiot drivers sliding off the road. One bright spark is that I was exposed to a pleasant word I didn't know: apricity.*

From the Latin word aprīcus, "warmed by the sun," apricity is a noun meaning "the warmth of the sun in winter." It's the type of hyper-specific word for a poetic concept that I just love to discover. It just sounds like a word that belongs in a Shakespearean sonnet.

Apricity led me on an exploration of other little-used winter-weather words, like psychrophile, chionoblepsia, and frigorific. I wrote about these an a gaggle of others yesterday on Copyediting.com in a post called "Underused Words for Winter Weather." Check it out.

Logophilius Central

* Thanks, Mom.