Humanities
Word curio icon

Word Curio

May 13, 2018

Word of the Day: Nascent

1 CQ

Word of the Day : May 13, 2018

nascent \NASS-unt\ adjective

Definition

: coming or having recently come into existence

Did You Know?

Nascent comes from nascens, the present participle of the Latin verb nasci, which means "to be born." It is a relative newcomer to the collection of English words that derive from that Latin verb. In fact, when the word nascent was itself a newborn, in the first quarter of the 17th century, other nasci offspring were already respectably mature. Nation, native, and nature had been around since the 1300s; innate and natal, since the 1400s. More recently, we picked up some French descendants of nasci: née in the 1700s and Renaissance in the 1800s. One of our newer nasci words is perinatology, which was first used in the late 1960s to name the specialized branch of medicine concerned with childbirth.

Build your vocabulary! Get Word of the Day in your inbox every day.

Test Your Vocabulary



  Farm Idioms Quiz








    What does 'poke' refer to in the expression 'pig in a poke'?




                                  bag
                                  stable
                                  state of difficulty
                                  mud pit








    Test your vocabulary with our 10-question quiz!
    TAKE THE QUIZ






    Test Your Knowledge - and learn some interesting things along the way.
    TAKE THE QUIZ

Aired May 13, 2018

All Merriam-Webster content is available at www.merriam-webster.com

  • Recommended Recommended
  • History & In Progress History
  • Browse Library
  • Most Popular Library

Get Personalized Recommendations

Let us help you figure out what to learn! By taking a short interview you’ll be able to specify your learning interests and goals, so we can recommend the perfect courses and lessons to try next.

Start Interview

You don't have any lessons in your history.
Just find something that looks interesting and start learning!

1 Comments
500 characters max
Jeff Z
The nascent snowfall was free of tracks.
500 characters max