• onymous •
Printable Version Pronunciation: ahn-ê-mês • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: 1. Named, having a name 2. Having a name attached or associated; not anonymous, as onymous letter to the editor.
Notes: This is not a sniglet, a word that should be in the dictionaries but isn't; it is a respectable word that is in the dictionaries but is widely ignored. It even has a family, including an adverb, onymously, a noun, onymity [ê-ni-mê-ti], and a much more famous antonym, anonymous.
In Play: Anything to which a name is attached is onymous: "Angelina had an onymous article on the front page of the newspaper after working there only 3 weeks." I prefer onymous letters to anonymous ones since my sense of anonymity is that it usually signals no-good: "Rory worried even more about his kidnapped daughter when he received an onymous letter written in letters clipped from newspapers."
Word History: Today's Good Word comes from the Greek noun onoma, onyma "name", a rearrangement of the sounds in nomen, which seems to have been the original Proto-Indo-European word for "name". We find this form in Latin nomen, nominis, which we borrowed for our word nominal "in name only". The Greek version also turns up in word like synonym and antonym, which we also borrowed from Greek. Yes, the same PIE root descended through the Germanic languages to German Name and English name. (Today's word was suggested by the blatantly onymous Lew Jury, who has sent us several interesting words before.)
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