A.Word.A.Day --solivagant

A.Word.A.Day

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Aug 24, 2026

This week’s theme
There’s a word for it

This week’s words
solivagant

Landscape with a Wanderer, 1830

Art: Thomas Fearnley

Previous week’s theme
Words that say it twice

Wordsmith Games

🧩	Jigsaw Riddle Irises at Horikiri
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A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

Language was compressing information long before the zip file. Why spend a whole phrase when a single word can carry the load?

You may have done it, experienced it, feared it, endured it, or lived under it. You simply may not have known what to call it.

This week we’ll unpack five lexical zip files.

solivagant

PRONUNCIATION:

(suh-LIV-uh-guhnt)

MEANING:

noun: A solitary wanderer.
adjective: Wandering alone.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin solivagus (wandering alone), from solus (alone) + vagus (wandering). Earliest documented use: 1621.

USAGE:

“[Mark] Burkholder was going from teammate to solivagant.”
Kristina Stucki; “It Was Always Our Plan to Share This”; The Journal of the San Juan Islands (Washington); Mar 26, 2026.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god. -Jorge Luis Borges, writer (24 Aug 1899-1986)

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