www.alphadictionary.com

• vexillology •

Pronunciation: vek-si-lah-lê-jee • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun, mass

Meaning: The study of flags.

Notes: Now we have a word with a double L and single L; don't forget. It comes with a panoply of lexical relatives. The adjective is vexillological(al), the adverb, vexillologically, and personal noun, vexillologist. Vexillation and vexillary refer to soldiers grouped under one standard.



In Play: Vexillological questions can rise to the forefront of national political issues: "Recently, a vexillological issue became political when white nationalists began parading about under the Confederate flag." Or not: "Barbara became a student of vexillology as a Girl Scout by camping out in various state parks and noting which ones flew the state flag upside down."

Word History: Today's Good Word was created from Latin vexillum "flag" + -ology "study of". Vexillum is a diminutive of velum "sail, cloth, curtain". Velum came to Latin from PIE weg-l- a suffixed form of weg- "to weave", which also lurks behind Irish figh "to weave", Welsh gweu "to knit", and English wick. English veil came from Old North French veil "kerchief" (Modern French voile), which French made from Latin vela, the plural of velum. (Now let's thank active Agoran Barbara Beeton for reminding us that Wordmaster William Hupy had suggested today's curious Good Word way back in 2014.)

Well, Latin may well have been a part of one of my majors in college, but that was a few years ago. Can anyone fill me in on just where that 'x' comes from? I gather it's a fit and proper diminutive, but it doesn't ring any bells in my feeble pate.

See the Wiktionary entry for velum:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/velum#Latin

The 'x' comes from Proto-Italic wekslom.

I thought I could explain it by regular phonological rules, but my explanation hits a blank wall. The combination [ks] is spelled X in Latin, but I don't know how PIE weg-l-om could get to Proto-Italic wekslom. I'm not sure where the S comes from.

The regular Latin diminutive suffix is -<i>culus</i>. If we assume the PIE diminutive something like this it would be added before the <i>l</i>-suffix, producing <i>weg-culus-l</i>, converting the [g] to [k] and [ks] in Latin is spelled X. Could be.

I'm a Slavicist, not a Romanticist.