Today's Word "Victual"
Published in Vocabulary
victual \VIT-ehl\ (noun) - Human food; (Plural) food and provisions
"Carrie was quick to point out that they had enough victuals in the house to live for three months without leaving it."
From Old French vitaille (also vitale), the normal descendent of Late Latin victualia, the neuter plural of victualis "food, sustenance." In Middle French, the [c] was reintroduced in the word to produce victuaille and English soon followed suit. The word is, in fact, sometimes spelled "vittle" but it has always been pronounced that way throughout the English-speaking world. The root goes back to Proto-Indo-European *gwei- which gave us English "quick" in the original sense of "alive." Latin lost the [g] and the [w] became [v] in vivere "to live," which stands behind our "vital," "vivid," "Viva!" and "vivacious."
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