GLADE

[Dr. Goodword]

• glade •

Pronunciation: glayd • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: An opening in a forest, a small field in the woods.

Notes: Today's Good Word has a lovely sound about it that suggests pleasant picnics, sunning, getting away from it all. No surprise that a leading US air freshener has taken it as its brand name. While glades are usually small, the Everglades in Florida are glades that seem to go on forever.

In Play: Glades are often thought of as cool places, probably because of a confusion with shade, but who knows? "Brooke Trout loved to read on summer days in a grassy glade sliced by a gurgling stream, just a pleasant walk from her house." Glades are usually found in forests, which are themselves cool, shady places: "Major Slaughter, intrepid hunter that he was, chased his prey into an open glade that turned out to be the 17th hole of the Hickory Nut Golf Course."

Word History: An interesting point: The original meaning of English glad was "bright, shining" and it was sometimes spelled g-l-a-d-e. This suggests that before the 16th century, when today's word first appeared, there was but one word glad or glade that meant "bright, shining". During the 16th century, however, the word split into two spellings, paralleled by two pronunciations and two meanings. If so, today's Good Word is related to a series of words in English referring to brightness or shining: glow, glimmer, glitter, gleam, and glint. These words are all the meanings of German glänzen, which shares the same origin.

[LukeJavan8]

And in the glades one will find fairy circles.

[skinem]

I like this word...just a happy word. Unlike the bad commercial for the product of the same name in which it is pronounced "all French"...

[LukeJavan8]

I like this word too. The commercial is repulsive.
But then, the more you know me the more you
will know I hate commercials of all kinds.
The only one l like currently is the Routan car adv.
The girl in the back spills her drink all over her
little brother in the seat before her. He begins to
take off his clothes and stuffs them in Routans
huge amount of cargo holds, below his feet, finally
all happy he sits bare-chested smiling while his
siblings turn up their lips in repulsion.