Aestivate • Verb, intransitive
Pronunciation: es-tuh-vay
To aestivate (or simply estivate) is to spend the summer, to summer somewhere. It also serves as the antonym of hibernate. Desert amphibians aestivate in the summer for the same reason bears hibernate in winter—to avoid seasonal extremes.
To tell the truth, summer itself is a lovely word, however commonplace it may be. Aestivate, however, is lovely with a touch of class, especially with an initial ae-ligature, that is, when written æstivate. Moreover, it bears the same alluring sense of summer, referring to a particularly pleasant season of the year. The act of aestivating is aestivation and aestival is a more sophisticatred Latiny alternative for the adjective summery, rhyming quite nicely with festival, many of which occur in the summer.
Does summer in the phrase, "I summer on the Côte d'Azur," strike you as beneath the dignity of Côte d'Azur, not to mention the amount of money you spend there? Then try, "I aestivate each year on the Côte d'Azur" and impress your friends even more. If your school is out for the summer but you are the only one of your clique without a job, impress them with, "I will be aestivating at leisure this summer." Of course, unless you can aestivate on the Côte d'Azur, you should keep looking for a job.
This beautiful word comes from Latin aestivare "to summer somewhere" from aestas "summer" with the same root as aestus "heat." Sanskrit inddhe "it ignites," Greek aithos "fire," and Old German eiten "to heat," all come from the same original root. The Old German word developed into Modern German Hitze "heat", close kin to English heat.
