Word of the Day - 3/22/12 - somnambulatory

somnambulatory
/som-nam-byuh-luh-tawr-ee/ IPA: /sɒmˈnæmbyələˌtɔri/


Adjective
1. carried out while sleepwalking
2. prone to sleepwalking
3. performing a task without enthusiasm; "going through the motions"

Lady Macbeth somnambulating in
William Shakespeare's Macbeth (c. 1603) 

Origin: Entered English as a verb in 1833 in the form somnambulate, from Latin somnus meaning "sleep" and ambulare meaning "to walk". The more common adjective form is somnambulant, which entered English in 1866. Somnambulatory is not recorded in any major dictionary, therefore the date it entered the English language is unclear. It can be classified as either an extinct form or a literary invention, perhaps by Sinclair Lewis in his famous work The Job: An American Novel, one of the few places the word can be found in print. This compound structure of two Latin roots can be found in many other English words, such as supernatural (from super meaning "over, above" and nascor meaning "to be born") and contrapuntal (from contra meaning "opposite" and punctum meaning "point").


Usage:
"For two years - two years snatched out of her life and traded for somnambulatory peace, Una lived this spectral life of one room in a family hotel on a side street near Sixth Avenue." - Sinclair Lewis, The Job: An American Novel (1917)


"Gatsby took an arm of each of us and moved forward into the restaurant whereupon Mr. Wolfshiem swallowed a new sentence he was starting and lapsed into a somnambulatory abstraction." - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)


Quote of the Day: "Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?" - Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)