Happy Friday! Today’s word of the day from Dictionary.com, Eximious comes from the Latin adjective eximius meaning “select, distinguished, excellent,” which is a derivative of the verb eximere, “to take out, remove.” It entered English in the mid-1500s.

When I looked for examples and uses of this word, I discovered it is one of those archaic words that never quite caught on. But it does have quite a colorful past just the same, as evidenced by this information I found.  Here is the story from WorldWideWords.org  about the not-so-eximious character, Andrew Borde, who first coined this word:

Eximious appeared first in The Breviary of Health, a book of 1547 by Andrew Borde, who was variously a monk, writer of an excellent travel book about Europe, spy for Thomas Cromwell, popular physician and reputed compiler of several books of jokes (he wrote in the Breviary that nothing comforted the heart so much as honest mirth and good company). He died in prison, having — it’s said — been found guilty of keeping three whores in his chamber in Winchester, though a contemporary explained that he was merely pimping them for members of the clergy.

He wrote in the Breviary about “The eximious and arcane science of physic”, that is, the excellent and mysterious science of medicine. That comment notably contains two neologisms, since he is also the first known user of arcane. He created other medical terms in the book which are still familiar, such as constipated, hydrophobia, head louse and ulcerated, but many of his terms didn’t catch on: a writer two centuries after him observed that he was as fond of hard and uncouth words as any quack could be.

Alrighty then! My my! 🙂 … here is my haiku. Have a good weekend.

Title does not prove
how eximious one is
depends on actions.

kat – 11 November 2016