This week’s theme
Words used figuratively

This week’s words
scaturient
relucent
miasmic


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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(my/mee-AZ-mik)

MEANING:

adjective:
1. Relating to noxious emissions, such as smoke and vapors.
2. Relating to an oppressive or unpleasant atmosphere.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Greek miasma (pollution, defilement), from miainein (to pollute). Earliest documented use: 1822.

NOTES:

For centuries it was believed that many diseases were caused by foul air rising from decomposing organic matter, especially swamps. Malaria, for example, takes its name from the Italian mala aria (bad air).

The germ theory of disease eventually displaced the miasma theory, though the word miasmic lingers for any atmosphere that feels unhealthy, physically or morally.

USAGE:

“The air is not near as foul as in the bad days of the 1970s, when skies were a miasmic yellow or brown.”
Robert Jablon; Smog Causing Health Issues in Southern California; Telegraph-Herald (Dubuque, Iowa); Aug 13, 2016.

“Maggie Thatcher’s England has darkened into a forbidding nightworld of miasmic unease and emotional drift.”
Joseph Dewey; Sweet England; Review of Contemporary Fiction (Dallas, Texas); Fall 2011.

See more usage examples of miasmic in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: