Today's Word "Effervescent"
Published in Vocabulary
effervescent \ef-fehr-VES-ent\ (adjective) - Boiling, bubbling, bubbly; ebullient, exuberant.
"Courtenay's effervescent laughter can bring the dullest get-together to life in a few seconds."
From Latin effervescere comprising ex- "out (from)" + fervescere "to start boiling," the inchoative of fervere "to boil." Clearly, the Latin root is also at the root of "fervid," "fervor," and "fervent." It comes from the Proto-Indo-European root bhreu- "burn;" in fact, it is the origin of "burn," after metathesis (the [r] and vowel switch places) and, before metathesis, "brew," "bread," "broth," and "breed." German brennen "burn" is another off-spring. The breathy [bh] sound, however, became [f] at the beginning of Latin words, hence "fervere" but also fornax "oven," from which we derived our "furnace" and "fornication," a strange word to share an origin with "breeding."
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