• exodic •
Pronunciation: eg-zah-dik, ek-sah-tik • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: 1. Pertaining to an exodus, a (mass) departure, exiting, exiting, going out. 2. (Medicine) Efferent, referring to motor nerves carrying signals away from the spinal cord rather than esodic, afferent or sensory nerves, carrying signals into the spinal cord.
Notes: Here is a word that surprised me, the rare adjective for the commonly used noun exodus. We rarely hear it because it is so easily confused with its homophone, exotic. It comes with a regular adverb, exodically, but has no qualitative noun.
In Play: The adjective for exodus is first and foremost tied to the book of Exodus in the Bible: "The book of Exodus in the Old Testament describes the exodic journey of the Jewish people out of Egypt and across the desert to Israel." But we could be using it every day: "From 4pm to 6pm there is stop-and-go exodic homeward-bound traffic on I-80."
Word History: Today's Good Word was made from Latin exodus "going out from", borrowed from Greek exodos "going out", made up of ex "(out) of, from" + hodos "way, road, journey". Some etymologists have given up on the history of this word; others trace it back to PIE sed-/sod- "to sit, set". The latter assume some use of the PIE word similar to English set out, set forth, set to. Three other IE languages have words referring to movement that seem to come from sed-/sod-, Sanskrit a-sad- "tread, go, get", Avestan apa-had- "to go away, weaken", and "Russian xodit' "to come, go" and xod "pace". (Now let's all thank Derek Blayney for his second fascinating Good Word in March and hope he suggests more of the same.)
