Acuminate

[Dr. Goodword]

• acuminate •

Pronunciation: ê-kyu-mê-nêt • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: 1. Pointed or pointy, coming to a sharp point. 2. Sharp, clearly focused.

Notes: The verb is acuminate [ê-'kyu-mê-nayt] "to sharpen (an object or a point in discourse)." The adjective is very common in the description of leaves that taper to a point, as 'an acuminate leaf'. It may also be used, though, to refer to anything, concrete or abstract, that comes to a point.

In Play: Have you ever wanted to call your boss a pointy-head without getting fired? Boy, do we have the word for you today! Because this word sounds so much like acumen, unless your chief is a subscriber to the Good Word, his chest will swell with pride when you say, "Learning from someone with such an acuminate head on his shoulders as you have is so rewarding." The reward is hearing yourself telling off your boss without repercussion. Of course, you may enjoy this word in the usual way, too: "I thought it a very acuminate answer she gave to Mortimer's question; it could not have been clearer."

Word History: Today's Good Word is a remake of Latin acuminatus, the past participle of acuminare "to make pointed, sharpen", akin to acumen "a point, acuteness, cunning". Acumen was derived from acuere "to sharpen", itself from acus "needle", which we also see in acupuncture. The same Proto-Indo-European word (ak- "sharp, pointed") that produced the Latin word, turned up in Greek as akis "needle". This word developed via Germanic into English edge and ear, as in ear or spike of grain. The same root metathesized to ka- and acquired the suffix -men. The stem ka-men became English hammer, German Hammer and Dutch hamer "hammer". In the Slavic languages it came to be Russian kamen', Polish kameń, and Slovak kameň "stone".

[MTC]

Like the head of a certain American president...

[tkowal]

A small correction: Polish kameń should be kamień (with an i).

[George Kovac]

Acuminate... what a wonderful word. I think its use has been primarily in botany and zoology, but I find it a word of delightful metaphoric possibility.

It’s a coy way of saying “pointy-headed,” a loaded term in American culture and politics. The always pejorative “pointy-headed,” (as in “pointy-headed intellectuals”) is believed to have been coined by Alabama’s Governor George Wallace, who in his rallies in 1968 disparaged hippies, traitorous Viet Nam protesters, welfare bums, cowardly politicians, sophisticated atheists, and “pointy-head college professors who can’t even park a bicycle straight.” The term "pointy-headed" indicates someone whom the name-caller finds overly-intellectual, condescending and out-of-touch with honorable ordinary folk (like those ordinary folks who are supporters of the name-caller.)

Wallace’s crude taunt was a lineal descendant of the rhetoric of Richard Nixon, who, during the 1952 presidential campaign, referred to Adlai Stevenson as an “egghead.”

Nixon and Wallace were both aculeate politicians. Both were saying the same thing. Their chief disagreement was about geometry.

[MTC]

In the morphology of leaves, "acuminate" is less pointed than "acicular" which means needle-like.
For a complete list of leaf (or leaflet) shapes including acuminate and acicular see:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossar ... .29_shapes

Beginning to get a prickly sensation...

[call_copse]

'aculeate' - that in itself is perhaps worthy of a suggestion. I didn't know it anyway.

[Slava]

An aculeate tongue in an acuminate head?

Pretty neat how something that came to mean pointed and needle also lead to hammer and stone.