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• pusillanimous •

Pronunciation: pyu-sê-læn-ê-mês • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: Weak, cowardly, completely lacking in will.

Notes: The trick in successfully deploying today's Good Word in writing is to remember that the Ls are doubled, not the Ss. To use it successfully in conversations, we must remember that the accent falls on the middle of the 5 syllables (see Pronunciation). However, it moves over one syllable in the noun: pusillanimity [pyu-sê-lê-nim-ê-ti].

In Play: Today's word is rather long but don't be too pusillanimous to try it when you want to refer to cowardice in a way that will go over the heads of most people: "The fact of the matter is that Lois Riske still lives in an apartment because she is too pusillanimous to assume a mortgage." It is particularly useful when talking about thrill rides like bungee jumping and roller coasters: "I thought Blanche Dwight too pusillanimous to ride the roller coaster but she screwed up her courage and surprised us all."

Word History: Today's Good Word comes from Late Latin pusillanimis, a compound comprising pusillus "weak" from pullus " young animal" + animus "mind, soul". Pullus, the origin of English pullet, comes from the Proto-Indo-European root pau- "small", unchanged in Latin paucus "small". This word became Spanish poco "little" and French peu "little, few". In English it turned up as few and in foal. The ani- in animus goes back to a PIE word meaning "breath", also present in Greek animos "wind". The connection was between the wind, breath, and the soul, which ancients sometimes associated with the visible breath on a cold day. (Today we thank the animated mind of Mark Bailey for overcoming any trace of pusillanimity and sending in today's Good Word.)

Yes, that's our Bailey. Ready to go where no words have gone before.


Perry-a-bit-of-a-Trekkie-Dror

Pullus, the origin of English pullet, [snip] In English it turned up...in foal.

Now there's a pullet surprise.

-gailr

Pullus, the origin of English pullet, [snip] In English it turned up...in foal.

Now there's a pullet surprise.

-gailr

Yeah. Good news.

I see some are not pusillanimous in their punning.

mark chicken-livered Bailey

I recently received this note from George Kovac:

I know you already featured a Good Word pusillanimous a dozen years ago, and so it is not a candidate for the Good Word of the day. But I thought you might enjoy this usage of the word (especially the etymological comment) from an Atlantic article about T S Eliot’s cruel statement he gave to Harvard to protest Emily Hale’s donation to Princeton of the love letters Eliot wrote to her over a 17 year period:

The Harvard statement is a horrible piece of writing, really. Pusillanimous, you might say, if you take the word back to its Latin root: pusillus animus, small soul. Declaring himself at the outset “disagreeably surprised” by Hale’s bequest to Princeton, Eliot proceeds to dissect his former feelings, and their object, like a patient etherized upon a table. “Upon the death of Vivienne in the winter of 1947, I suddenly realised that I was not in love with Emily Hale … I came to see that my love for Emily was the love of a ghost for a ghost, and that the letters I had been writing to her were the letters of an hallucinated man.” Had he married Hale, he writes, she “would have killed the poet in me.” “Insensitiveness” … “Bad taste” … Perhaps, he speculates, she was more in love with his reputation than with him. “I might mention that I never at any time had sexual relations.”