This week’s theme
Toponyms

This week’s words
Capuan
canterbury
helotage
Elysium
Canaan

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(HEL-uh-tazh)

MEANING:

noun: A state of servitude or bondage.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Helos, a town in Laconia in ancient Greece, whose inhabitants were enslaved. Earliest documented use: 1934.

NOTES:

Other towns in Laconia that have also inspired words in the English language are spartan, after Sparta, the capital of Laconia and caryatid. Laconia itself has given us the word laconic.

USAGE:

“If access to the web does indeed become the determinant of future knowledge and economic growth ... the poor will be condemned to a helotage even worse than that which they are suffering now.”
Tom Holland; Nothing Will Ever Be the Same Again; New Statesman (London, UK); Nov 22, 1999.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: