Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

psephology • \see-FAH-luh-jee\ • noun Psephology is the scientific study of elections. // Brianna was excited to learn that a course on psephology on the schedule for next semester will coincide with local and state elections. See the entry > Examples: "The high school-aged participants of the program partake in various aspects of psephology, from gaining support early in a campaign to debating fellow candidates." — James Barberis, The Tallahassee (Florida) Democrat, 28 Sept. 2020 Did you know? Psephology comes from the Greek word "psēphos," meaning "pebble." (One relative of psephology is psephomancy, meaning "divination by pebbles.") Psephology merited election as the name for the work of election analysts, or psephologists, because pebbles were used by the ancient Greeks in voting. Similarly, the word ballot was an excellent choice for a means of voting since it comes from ballotta, an Italian word meaning "little ball," and Italians once voted by placing such balls in a container.

amalgamate • \uh-MAL-guh-mayt\ • verb Amalgamate is a formal verb meaning "to unite (two or more things) into one thing." // The band became famous for amalgamating different musical styles into a unique, signature sound. See the entry > Examples: "Place the cornmeal in a bowl, and sift in the flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda. Stir the mixture with a spoon or whisk to amalgamate." — Martha Rose Shulman, The New York Times, 13 Nov. 2023 Did you know? Today, one can amalgamate—that is, combine into one—any two (or more) things, such as hip-hop and country music, for example. The origins of amalgamate, however, have more to do with heavy metal. Amalgamate comes from the Medieval Latin verb amalgamāre, meaning "to combine (a metal) with mercury." It’s been part of English since the 1500s, its introduction closely trailing that of the noun amalgam (from the Medieval Latin amalgama), which in its oldest use means "a mixture of mercury and another metal." (In modern dentistry, amalgams combining liquid mercury with powders containing silver, tin, and other metals are often used for filling holes in teeth). Amalgamate can be used either technically, implying the creation of an alloy of mercury, or more generally for the formation of any compound or combined entity.

cursory • \KER-suh-ree\ • adjective Something described as cursory has been done or made quickly. // We were disappointed that the mayor gave only a cursory glance at our report. See the entry > Examples: “After a few cursory questions … one of the owners offered me the job on the spot and I said yes without asking about the pay, which caused the other one to laugh and hit the table with his hand and promise to teach me a thing or two about the real world.” — Sarah Gilmartin, Service: A Novel, 2024 Did you know? Let your cursor linger long enough on our pages, and you’ll be surprised at how much you can quickly discover. Consider the entry for cursory, for example. If you surmise after a mere cursory glance that there’s not much to know about a word with a single sense (“hastily done or made”), you may want to hold your horses. There’s so much to find, including a helpful guide to choosing synonyms of cursory, such as shallow and superficial, that also describe things done with a lack of attention or care. There’s also an etymology section, where one learns that cursory was borrowed from the Medieval Latin adjective cursōrius, which described things that were swift or related to running, and which in turn comes from the Latin noun cursor, meaning “runner.” This fact may prompt you to jog over to the entries of other cursor descendants, such as cursorial (“adapted to or involving running,” as in “cursorial insects”) and, well, cursor.

extricate • \EK-struh-kayt\ • verb To extricate someone or something is to free or remove that person or thing from an entanglement or difficulty, such as a trap or a difficult conversation. // She hasn't been able to extricate herself from her legal problems. // It took all afternoon to extricate the tractor from the mud. See the entry > Examples: “When you've spent your entire life achieving highly—from school into jobs—it can be incredibly difficult to extricate yourself from the mentality that your professional success defines your worth.” — Julia DiPrete, Business Insider, 3 Jan. 2024 Did you know? Oh what a tangled web the English language weaves. Extricate, for example, may remind you of extract, another word applied when something is removed, but we can tease them apart. Although extricate and extract resemble each other, to extract something is to remove it using methods that often involve physical force, as in “the dentist had to extract my tooth.” Extricate, on the other hand, is more often used for the act of freeing someone or something from a difficult or tangled situation, which can, but need not, involve literal yanking or pulling. Extricating yourself from an awkward conversation, after all, can be as simple as announcing “I need to take this call!” and shuffling off with phone to ear. Extricate comes from the Latin verb extricare, which combines the prefix ex- (“out of”) with the noun tricae, meaning “trifles or perplexities.”

hatching • \HATCH-ing\ • noun Hatching refers to the drawing or engraving of lines close together as a method of shading, or to a pattern so created. // The artist uses hatching to breathe life into her comics. // The hatching adds depth to the illustration. See the entry > Examples: "During the second half of the 19th century, drawing achieved a higher status. No longer merely a preparatory tool, nor merely just a method for training of the eye, it gained a new autonomy.... Pastel became popular at this time partly because it was easily portable and versatile, capable of supporting lively hatching as well as silky smoothness." — Frances Spalding, Apollo, 12 Feb. 2024 Did you know? Hatching refers to the drawing or engraving of lines close together as a method of shading. The closer the lines, the darker the impression that is created. When the lines are drawn at an angle so as to intersect one another, that is called cross-hatching. One notable artist who drew on this technique is John Tenniel, the illustrator of Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Another is Albrecht Dürer, whose sketches have been celebrated for their adept use of cross-hatching to indicate foreshortening (an appearance of something, such as a subject's nose, as shortened due to its being pointed toward the viewer). The word hatching is a gerund of the verb hatch, which in turn comes from the Middle French hacher, meaning "to chop, slice up, or incise with fine lines." If hatching isn’t your preferred style of shading, you might also consider stippling or blending.

hallowed • \HAL-oad\ • adjective Hallowed describes something, such as a memorial, considered holy or blessed, or something that is highly respected and revered. // The church stands on hallowed ground. // Community service is one of the organization’s most hallowed traditions. See the entry > Examples: "Writing these words, I’m sitting in the living room of my childhood home, about five feet from the shelves that long ago contained those hallowed books from my aunt. In this exact spot, even before I had learned how to spell and write, I would scribble on blank paper with Magic Markers and staple the pages together—always, this desire, this drive to make books." — Zachary Pace, LitHub.com, 23 Jan. 2024 Did you know? The adjective hallowed, meaning "holy" or "revered," isn’t especially spooky, but its history is entwined with that of a certain spooky season. Hallowed is the past participle of the verb hallow, a term that descends from the Middle English word halowen. That word can be traced back to the Old English adjective hālig, meaning "holy." During the Middle Ages, All Hallows' Day was the name for what Christians now call All Saints' Day (hallow was once used also as a noun referring to a saint), and the evening that preceded All Hallows' Day was All Hallows' Eve or All Hallow Even—or, as we know it today, Halloween. (Although pumpkins are often hollowed out on Halloween, hollow has a different Old English root.)

syncretism • \SING-kruh-tiz-um\ • noun Syncretism refers to the combining of different forms of belief or practice. // As a scholar of religion, Laila is especially interested in the syncretism of Manichaeism, which was influenced by Christianity, Buddhism, and Zoroastrianism. See the entry > Examples: "Explore the archaeological wonders of Chavín de Huantar, where history comes alive. This village, steeped in cultural richness, provides a journey into Peru's ancient past. 'The village of Chavín de Huántar is an example of how tourism can foster syncretism between religious traditions and ancestral cultural elements, generating experiences with a positive impact for the population and improving the quality of life of its residents,' said the UNWTO [United Nations World Tourism Organization]." — Laura Begley Bloom, Forbes, 26 Nov. 2023 Did you know? The ancient Greeks used the term synkrētismos to refer to Cretan cities allied in opposition to a common enemy. In the early 17th century, English speakers adopted the term in the anglicized form syncretism to refer to the union of different religious beliefs. Three centuries later, lexicographers of the 1909 edition of Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language added a new definition of syncretism ("the union or fusion into one or two or more originally different inflectional forms, as of two cases"), but this specialized sense is rarely encountered outside of the field of linguistics. Some related terms that you are more likely to encounter are syncretize ("to attempt to unite and harmonize"), syncretist ("one who advocates syncretism"), and syncretic and syncretistic ("characterized or brought about by syncretism").

omniscient • \ahm-NISH-unt\ • adjective Omniscient describes someone or something with unlimited knowledge or understanding. // "You'll need to tell me when you don't understand something I've explained," Maria said. "I'm not omniscient, you know." See the entry > Examples: "The Abrahamic faiths conceive of God as an omniscient creator and generally abjure gambling as a result; one of the first laws passed by the Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony banned the possession of cards, dice, or gaming tables." — Idrees Kahloon, The New Yorker, 2 Sept. 2024 Did you know? One who is omniscient literally knows all. The word omniscient traces back to two Latin roots: omni-, meaning "all" or "universally," and the noun scientia, meaning "knowledge." You will recognize omni- as the prefix that tells all in such words as omnivorous ("eating all," or in actual use, "eating both plants and animals") and omnipotent ("all-powerful"). Scientia comes from the Latin verb scīre, meaning "to know," which likewise has a number of other knowledge-related descendants in English, including conscience, science, and prescience (meaning "foreknowledge").

disbursement • \diss-BERSS-munt\ • noun A disbursement is a payout of money from a fund that has been created for a special purpose. Disbursement can also refer to the money that is paid out. // The company has made large disbursements for research. See the entry > Examples: “Constructing and reserving White Stadium for the benefit of Boston Public Schools student-athletes was more due to the interpretation of the fund’s Board of Trustees, which, per the will, are in charge of the control and management of said fund, and the disbursement of its income, the source said.” — Gayla Cawley, The Boston Herald, 9 Sept. 2024 Did you know? Disbursement was minted in English in the late 16th century by melding the noun suffix -ment with the verb disburse (which in turn comes, in part, from the Medieval Latin word bursa, meaning “money bag”). During the 16th and 17th centuries, deburse, depurse, and dispurse were deposited in the English language bank as synonyms of disburse. Deburse and depurse were also used respectively to form debursement and depursement, but these synonyms of disburse and disbursement all quickly declined in value and were never redeemed.

usurp • \yoo-SERP\ • verb To usurp something (such as power) is to take and keep it by force and without the right to do so. Usurp can also mean "to take the place of by or as if by force." // Some people have accused city council members of trying to usurp the mayor’s power. // We cannot allow lies to usurp the truth. See the entry > Examples: “[Kazimierz] Pułaski, like other Poles in the 1770s, hoped for the American republic to live because he was watching the Polish republic perish. Pułaski was a veteran of wars with Russia. Catherine the Great, a German princess, had usurped the Russian imperial throne after the murder of her husband in a coup d’état in 1762.” — Timothy Snyder, The Atlantic, 15 Sept. 2024 Did you know? While often associated with questionable behavior by the royals of eras past, usurp retains its usefulness today. It’s still typically applied when someone takes power without authority or the right to do so, though the power taken is not necessarily political and the question of right and authority may be subject to debate; a city council usurping a mayor’s power is a more traditional use of the word, but one product can be said to be usurping market share from another, and one athlete may claim to have usurped GOAT status. The usurpation can even be sartorial: Amanda Mull, writing for The Atlantic, noted how tracksuits in the 1980s “usurped much of cotton sweatpants’ momentum toward legitimate coolness.” Usurp comes from Latin: usurpare, meaning “to take possession of without a legal claim,” was formed by combining usu (a form of usus, meaning “use,” which also led to the words usually and use) and rapere (“to seize”).

categorical • \kat-uh-GOR-ih-kul\ • adjective Categorical is a synonym of absolute and definite that describes something that is said in a very strong and clear way. It can also mean "of, relating to, or constituting a category" or "involving, according with, or considered with respect to specific categories." // The organization has issued a categorical denial about its involvement in the deal. // The library relies on a categorical system for classifying books. See the entry > Examples: "In the last 15 years or so, psychiatry has embraced what's called a dimensional approach, based on the idea of scales and spectrums of trait and symptom severity. That replaced the categorical approach, which took a more binary view of mental syndromes and assessed whether conditions were present or not." — David Adam, Smithsonian Magazine, 3 Aug. 2023 Did you know? The ancestor of categorical and category has been important in logic and philosophy since the days of Aristotle. Both English words come from the Greek word katēgoria, which Aristotle used to name the ten fundamental classes (also called "predications" or "assertions") of terms, things, or ideas into which he felt human knowledge could be organized. Ironically, although those categories and things categorical are supposed to be absolute and fundamental, philosophers have long argued about the number and type of categories that exist and the role they play in our understanding of the world. High-level philosophical disputes aside, the word categorical continues to sometimes describe an absolute assertion, one that involves no conditions or hypotheses—for example, the statement "hot dogs are sandwiches all humans are mortal."

euphoria • \yoo-FOR-ee-uh\ • noun Euphoria refers to a feeling of great happiness and excitement. // The initial euphoria following their championship victory has since subsided. See the entry > Examples: “Ciara picked up the crown where it had landed. It was warm, but more than that, the metal seemed to pulse somehow, like it was a living thing with a heartbeat of its own. It almost buzzed in her hands and she felt a gentle euphoria, simply holding it.” — Juno Dawson, The Shadow Cabinet: A Novel, 2023 Did you know? Health and happiness are often linked, sometimes even in etymologies. Today euphoria generally refers to happiness, but it comes from euphoros, a Greek word that means “healthy.” Given that root, it’s unsurprising that in its original English uses euphoria was a medical term. A medical dictionary published in 1881 (The New Sydenham Society’s Lexicon of Medicine and the Allied Sciences), for example, defines euphoria as “well-being, or the perfect ease and comfort of healthy persons, especially when the sensation occurs in a sick person,” and the second edition of our own unabridged dictionary published in 1934 labels euphoria as a psychological term meaning “a sense of well-being and buoyancy.” The idea of buoyancy also connects to the word’s Greek roots: euphoros comes from a combination of the prefix eu-, meaning “well” or “easily,” and the verb pherein, meaning “to bear.” Modern physicians still use the term, but euphoria has since entered everyday usage as a word for happy feelings so intense one feels borne aloft—that is, as if one is floating on air.

garnish • \GAHR-nish\ • verb To garnish food or drink is to add decorative and tasty touches to it, such as a spiral of lemon peel. // Aditi likes to garnish her mashed potatoes with chives and a dollop of sour cream. // Slivers of dark chocolate garnished the cake. See the entry > Examples: “For the more modern power diner, attuned to the virtuous aesthetics of wellness, there’s a suite of blended juices served in slim-stemmed wine glasses, each garnished with a floating edible flower, and an airy hummus made of whipped sunflower seeds, served with a rainbow of crudités on a bed of ice.” — Helen Rosner, The New Yorker, 21 Apr. 2024 Did you know? When it comes to meanings, garnish giveth, and garnish taketh away. To garnish something is to decorate it, embellish it, give it that extra bit of culinary or designer flair—say, a sprig of parsley or a string of garland. In decidedly different contexts, however, to garnish something—such as the wages of someone who is in debt—is to take it by legal authority. How did this word come to have such opposite meanings? The answer lies in garnish’s Anglo-French root, garnir, which has various meanings including “to give notice or legal summons” and “to decorate.” Before wages were garnished, the debtor would be served with a legal summons or warning. The legal sense of garnish now focuses on the taking of the wages, but it is rooted in the action of furnishing the warning.

palaver • \puh-LAV-er\ • noun Palaver is an informal word that usually refers to unimportant or meaningless talk. It can also refer to misleading or deceptive speech, or to a conference or discussion. In British English the word is sometimes used as a synonym of fuss to refer to unnecessary excitement about something. // Enough of this palaver. We have more important things to discuss. See the entry > Examples: "Henry [Thoreau] was working at his journal, as he usually did for a part of each day. He was reading Chaucer and liking it. A couple of days later, on Monday, January 3, he made popcorn, which he playfully called 'cerealious blossoms' because they were 'only a more rapid blossoming of the seed under a greater than July heat.' On Wednesday, January 5, as early clouds gave way to midday sun, he praised manual labor as 'the best method to remove palaver from one’s style.' Maybe he took his own advice about palaver. We hear no more from him about cerealious blossoms." — Robert D. Richardson, Three Roads Back: How Emerson, Thoreau, and William James Responded to the Greatest Losses of Their Lives, 2023 Did you know? Let’s talk about palaver. Though the word comes from Portuguese, it likely entered English by way of the West African coast in the 18th century. Portuguese sailors there used their word palavra, which in general use means "speech" or "word," as a term for discussions with the native people they encountered. English sailors applied palaver for the same, and then brought the word back to their own shores. The Portuguese word comes ultimately from the Late Latin noun parabola, meaning "speech" or "parable." If Portuguese isn’t in your wheelhouse, perhaps you’ll recognize the influence of Latin parabola on other tongues: the Spanish palabra, for instance, means "word," and the French parler means "to speak."

betwixt • \bih-TWIKST\ • adverb or preposition Betwixt is a synonym of between that lends an old-fashioned feel to both speech and writing. It is sometimes used in the phrase "betwixt and between" to mean "in the middle" or "neither one thing nor the other." // Charley took a seat betwixt two other passengers. // They sat on the long bench, a pile of books betwixt them. // The novel's protagonist is at the edge of early adulthood, when one is betwixt and between. See the entry > Examples: "Wolverines players were skipping toward the locker room after the trophy presentation, roses betwixt their teeth, battle scars on their bodies. Not many players in the recent history of college football have gone to the underworld and come back alive. But there was no doubt they belonged here, at last." — Tyler R. Tynes, The Los Angeles Times, 2 Jan. 2024 Did you know? Betwixt and between have similar origins: they both come from a combination of be- ("make, cause to be, treat as") and related Old English roots. Both words appeared before the 12th century, but use of betwixt dropped off considerably toward the end of the 1600s. It never fully disappeared, however, surviving especially in the phrase "betwixt and between" ("neither one thing nor the other"). Nathaniel Hawthorne employed betwixt no fewer than thirteen times in The Scarlet Letter, as when writing of "fear betwixt" the young, guilt-stricken minister Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne, as well as "a kind of horror at her boldness, who had spoken what he vaguely hinted at, but dared not speak." Nowadays, betwixt is uncommon, but it isn't archaic; it's simply used more purposefully than between, as it tends to lend a certain old-timey feel to speech and writing.

intransigent • \in-TRAN-suh-junt\ • adjective Intransigent is a formal word that describes a person who refuses to compromise or abandon an often extreme position or attitude. It can also describe a thing, such as a system or point of view, that shows the same kind of stubbornness. // Despite the mediator's best efforts, the opposing sides in the dispute remained intransigent. See the entry > Examples: "Honey and vinegar, a traditional medicinal combination known as oxymel, dates to the ancient world. Apothecaries in the Middle Ages sold it, Hippocrates prescribed it and the physician-philosopher Ibn-Sīnā extolled its virtues. Today such a mixture sounds likelier to dress a salad than a lesion—but with antibiotic-resistant bacteria on the rise, scientists are eagerly seeking new ways to fight intransigent infections. Now a study in Microbiology suggests oxymel may indeed help." — Leo Deluca, Scientific American, 1 Oct. 2023 Did you know? Both intransigent and its younger sibling intransigence come to English from the Spanish adjective intransigente, meaning "uncompromising," and ultimately from the Latin verb transigere, "to come to an agreement." Knowing that many English words with the prefix in- have prefix-less antonyms, one might guess that transigent has its own place in our language. While this word does pop up occasionally in print, it is too uncommon at this point to qualify for entry in our dictionaries. Since intransigent is a Spanish borrowing, English transigent is considered a back-formation–that is, a word formed by subtraction of a real or supposed affix.

defenestration • \dee-fen-uh-STRAY-shun\ • noun Defenestration is most often used to refer to a usually swift dismissal or expulsion, as from a political party or office. It is also used to refer to a throwing of a person or thing out of a window. // Once fancying itself something of a big tent, the group now seeks the defenestration of any local leader who isn't aligned with the current mayor's administration. // Ingrid's annoyance at the alarm clock’s persistent drone led to the clock's sudden defenestration from her eighth-floor bedroom. See the entry > Examples: "Since his defenestration, Michael had dabbled in investing, but he was open to returning to the cutthroat world of Silicon Valley start-ups." — Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter, 2024 Did you know? These days, defenestration—from the Latin fenestra, meaning "window"—is often used to describe the forceful removal of someone from public office or from some other advantageous position. History's most famous defenestration, however, was one in which the tossing out the window was quite literal. On May 23, 1618, two imperial regents were found guilty of violating certain guarantees of religious freedom and were thrown out the window of Prague Castle. The men survived the 50-foot tumble into the moat, but the incident marked the beginning of the Bohemian resistance to Hapsburg rule that eventually led to the Thirty Years' War and came to be known as the Defenestration of Prague. It was, in fact, the third such historical defenestration in Prague, but it was the first to be referred to as such by English speakers.

appreciable • \uh-PREE-shuh-bul\ • adjective Appreciable describes things that can be perceived or measured. // Researchers found that the temperature change made no appreciable difference in the chemical reaction. See the entry > Examples: “Digital transformations have made an appreciable impact on society. Whether it's conspicuous guidance or subtle suggestion, technology influences our everyday decisions.” — Glenn Harvey, Business Insider, 1 June 2024 Did you know? If you assumed that appreciable means “able to be appreciated,” we see you and we appreciate you. You’ve got a good eye for word families: appreciable does indeed share an ancestor with appreciate. However, the former does not describe things that are worthy of gratitude or admiration for their value, but rather things that are noticeable or measurable, as in “an appreciable difference between the two shades of green.” Appreciable comes, via French, from the Late Latin verb appretiare (“to appraise” or “to put a price on”), and is one of several English adjectives that can be applied to something that can be detected, felt, or measured. When it comes to vocabulary, it’s hard to put a price on having an abundance of options.

zest • \ZEST\ • noun Zest refers to an enjoyably exciting quality, or to keen enjoyment itself. In culinary use, zest refers to small pieces of the peel of a lemon, lime, orange, or other citrus fruit used as flavoring. // His humor added zest to the presentation's admittedly dry material. // The couple has a zest for travel and adventure. // Lime zest adds a burst of brightness to the dessert's rich flavor. See the entry > Examples: "In 1773, J.A.E. Groeze, a German pastor with a zest for microscopy, first identified the tardigrade.... Because tardigrades are micro-sacs of goo (albeit with mouths, rectums, and esophagi), they don’t fossilize. But three of their intact remains from deep time have been found—all in amber, spread out over nearly sixty years of painstaking searching between 1964 and 2022." — Daniel Lewis, Twelve Trees: The Deep Roots of Our Future, 2024 Did you know? When life hands you lemons, the saying goes, make lemonade. The message of this zingy aphorism is to take situations that are metaphorically sour and make them sweeter. You could do this by squeezing entire lemons to restore some excitement and enjoyment to your life, but you could also just take a little of the zest. Zest of course, refers to tiny pieces of citrus rind that are used to brighten, or enhance, the flavor of food and beverages. English speakers adopted the French word zest (zeste in modern French) in the late 1600s with this meaning, but it didn’t take long for them to spice up their language with an additional sense referring to any quality that adds enjoyment to something in the same way that the zest of a citrus fruit adds flavor to food. Later they extended the word to gusto—that is, enthusiastic enjoyment—itself, whether it be gustatory or not.

fugacious • \fyoo-GAY-shus\ • adjective Fugacious is a formal word that describes something that lasts only a short time. // The rock band’s early success proved fugacious; within two years its members had moved on to other careers. // Savor the enduring pleasures of life as intensely as the fugacious ones. See the entry > Examples: “The Handel & Hendrix [House], on 23 and 25 Brook Street in central London, reopens 18 May.... The 18th century German composer George Frideric Handel called number 25 home for some 36 years, up until his death in 1759. Here, he manufactured hits like coronation/Champions League belter Zadok the Priest, and the Music for the Royal Fireworks with such voraciousness, his manuscripts were often bespattered with food and beer stains. Perhaps you'd equate such sloppiness with Jimi Hendrix; his tenancy in a flat at 23 Brook Street was altogether fugacious; he was only here from 1968-9—though in that time, used it for countless interviews, jam sessions—and referred to it as the only place he ever lived that felt like home.” — Will Noble, The Londonist, 18 May 2023 Did you know? The word fugacious is too rare and unusual to qualify as vanilla, but the vanilla plant itself can be useful for recalling its meaning. Fugacious (which comes from Latin fugax, meaning “swift, fleeting,” and ultimately from fugere, “to run away”) describes the ephemeral—that is, those things in life that last only a brief time before fleeing or fading away. The word is often used to describe immaterial things, such as emotions, but botanists like to apply the word to plant parts (such as seeds, fruits, petals, and leaflets) that are quickly shed or dropped. Vanilla plants, for example, are said to have fugacious blossoms, as their flowers last only a single day during the blooming season. You may remember this the next time you’re baking with vanilla, and perhaps wishing that its rich, fugacious aroma would linger just a little bit longer.