Since 1992
Print and digital marketing
By Barbara McAllister
Word of the Day: Brumal
If you’re tired of saying “wintry” try “brumal.” It won’t make it any less cold, but it provides a change to the usual “freezing,” “bitter” and “cold” descriptives. “Brumal” means characteristic of or pertaining to winter. It comes from the Latin word for winter, which arose from the word brevima, a term meaning winter or the winter solstice. The winter solstice being the shortest day, the Latin contraction also gives us the words abbreviate, brevity and brief.
Winter in New England is anything but brief. A candidate for 2022’s most depressing album is ”Apricity & Other Rare Wintery Words,” by the Closer We Are to Dying. I have never listened to the album. Possibly if the artist was named something a bit more upbeat, like Festive Frozen Beauty, I might be inclined to give it a listen, but winter is long enough without adding to the depression. However, the opportunity to learn new words is a rare winter treat. The song titles in the album are “Apricity,” “Brumation,” “Hiemation,” “Subnivean” and “Frore.”
“Apricity” means the warmth of the winter sun. Cats take advantage of curling up in the kitchen’s late afternoon December apricity. It’s a delightful, obsolete word for a delightful concept. “Apricity” won’t appear in any dictionary except the venerable Oxford English Dictionary, and you’ll find that autocorrect wants to keep changing it to “apricot.” “Hiemation” is the passing of winter in a particular place. Many Mainers seek hiemation in Florida rather than suffer through New England’s brumation. “Subnivean” is Latin for “under snow.” Rabbits build subnivean tunnels in the winter and if you don’t have a garage, you’re liable to find your car subnivean after a winter blizzard. “Frore” is very cold or frosty from the Middle English “froren,” for frozen. Would Disney’s blockbuster musical “Frozen” have been as successful if it had been called the tongue-twisting “Frore”?
Other rare winter words that could have been included on the album are “psychrophiles,” organisms that thrive in low temperatures, as opposed to “thermophiles,” which do well in hot temperatures. Many thermophiles find themselves married to psychrophiles. Don’t forget the word “siztmark,” the impression left in the snow when a skier falls backwards. It’s a good Scrabble word, but a bad landing.
