Today's Word "Recidivism"
Published in Vocabulary
recidivism \ri-SID-eh-viz-ehm\ (noun) - A relapse or reversion to a previous nature, character, or state; back-sliding.
"Recidivism among dieters peaks between Christmas and the New Year holidays."
Today's word was created by analogy from "recidivist," itself taken from French recidiviste, a noun derived from recidiver "to relapse," inherited from Medieval Latin recidivare "to fall back." "Recidivare" is an extension of recidere "to fall back, relapse, return" based on re- "back" + cadere "to fall." The Latin root cad- comes from Proto-Indo-European *kad- "fall," which we also find in Sanskrit s'ad- "fall off" and Armenian cacnum "fall, come down." Latin "cadere" underlies English "cadence," "casual," "cadaver," and "case" (German uses a similar sense: Fall "case, instance").
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