Today's Word "Doyen"
Published in Vocabulary
doyen \doy-YEHN\ (noun) - The dominant senior member of a profession, activity, or social arena.
"When he retired, Walter Cronkite was considered by many as the doyen of the US press corps."
Today's word was borrowed from French doyen/doyenne "dean, most senior member," the legitimate heir of Late Latin decanus "leader of ten" (from Greek dekanos "chief of ten"), based on Latin decem and Greek deka "ten." The root dec- "ten" occurs in many English words borrowed from Latin, including "decimate," "decimal," "decade," and what was the tenth month of the Latin calendar, "December." The original Proto-Indo-European root was *dekm- but we would expect that [m] to become [n] before a [t], so English "tenth" derives from it in a rather straightforward way, with [k] > [gh] > nothing, as it continues to do today.
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