Quotidian

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Dr. Goodword
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Quotidian

Postby Dr. Goodword » Tue Jun 11, 2013 7:49 pm

• quotidian •

Pronunciation: kwo-ti-di-yên • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: 1. Daily, every day. 2. Ordinary, everyday, commonplace, pedestrian, trivial, usual.

Notes: There are no tricks in spelling or pronouncing this word; just remember the ending is -an and not -en. To avoid this confusion altogether, you may use -al; quotidial is less frequently used but means the same thing. You may freely add -ly to either of these adjectives to make them adverbs: "It doesn't help Randolph to ask the boss quotidianly (quotidially) for a raise."

In Play: Anything done on a daily basis is quotidian: "Agnes's quotidian chores around the house included getting her husband out of bed each morning." Anything you see every day, that is ordinary and not unusual, is also quotidian: "Les Rich can't afford a Rolex, so he wears a quotidian timepiece he paid $19.95 for."

Word History: Today's Good Word comes to us (via Old French) from the Latin adjective quotidianus, from quotidie "every day", a word based on a phrase quot "how many, as many" + dies "day". If quot is remindful of other Latin interrogative pronouns, like quo "where", qui "what", quis "who", that is because they all come from the same Proto-Indo-European root: kw-, preserved in Latin but modified in Slavic and Germanic languages. The Slavic languages lost the [w], resulting in Russian kto 'who', kuda 'where to', kogda 'when', once all the Russian endings were added. In English the [k] became [h], giving us what, when, and where which (another one)—even if they are written WH, all are pronounced [hw] in most dialects of English.
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LukeJavan8
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Re: Quotidian

Postby LukeJavan8 » Wed Jun 12, 2013 11:54 am

Panem nostrum cotidianum da nobis hodie...

'cotidianum must be derived from quotidian in some fashion.
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Perry Lassiter
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Re: Quotidian

Postby Perry Lassiter » Wed Jun 12, 2013 2:17 pm

More likely, I think, they both go back to the same Latin roots.
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Slava
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Re: Quotidian

Postby Slava » Wed Jun 12, 2013 3:04 pm

I suspect cotidianum is a Modern Latin version, or perhaps even a typo from a scribe.
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gailr
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Re: Quotidian

Postby gailr » Wed Jun 12, 2013 8:20 pm

Did that scribe meet his quota of transcription errors?


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