oppidan
adjective [op-i-duhn]
of a town; urban.
I think I have a better-than-average vocabulary. I know words like defenestrate and quotidian. I know that the accent on the word indefatigable comes on the third syllable, not the fourth. Oppidan was a new one on me.
My education is sorely lacking in many ways, some more obvious than others, but we won't go there just now.
The Dictionary.com people always explain their word of the day. Here is what they said about oppidan:
Oppidan derives from Latin oppidānus “of a town,” from the noun oppidum “town.” Oppidānus didn’t just describe any town, though: it was used of towns other than Rome, which was referred to as urbs “city,” specifically the capital city of Rome. Due to this distinction from Rome, Latin oppidānus could have the pejorative connotation of “provincial, rustic.” The adjective form of urbs was urbānus “of the city,” source of English urban. Another city-based adjective English gets from Latin is municipal, from mūnicipium, a town whose residents had the rights of Roman citizens but which otherwise governed itself. Oppidan entered English by the mid-1500s.
We've all heard the old saying "an apple a day keeps the doctor away".
My dad used to say that an onion a day keeps everyone away.
Here's what I think. I think a new word a day keeps the cobwebs away.
The older I get, the more I think it.
Where I live is not urban, suburban, exurban, or rural. It is certainly not oppidan in the sense of provincial or rustic. I live at the very edge of what Atlanta's city planners refer to as urban sprawl. I like to say that eastern Cherokee County, where I live, is very much like the hem of the garment of the high priest in ancient Israel as described in both the 28th and 39th chapters of the book of Exodus in the Old Testament, because as you go around the hem of the high priest's garment there's a bell and a pomegranate, a bell and a pomegranate, and as you go around eastern Cherokee County there's a farm and a subdivision, a farm and a subdivision. We have heavy traffic on our roads, and we have horses and cows between our subdivisions. Well, we don’t, but you get what I’m saying.
Were you familiar with the word oppidan?
Remember, it's a sin to lie in the comments.
