Today's Word "acerbic"
Published in Vocabulary
acerbic \eh-SEHR-bik\ (adjective) - Sour, bitter, or acidic to the taste; harsh or cutting, as a remark or tone.
"Janice made an acerbic remark about the contents of Mary's head and left without further comment."
From Latin acerbus "harsh, bitter, briny" from Proto-Indo-European ak- "sharp, hard" + r, a common PIE suffix. Akin to acer "sharp, bitter" underlying English "acrid." Suffixed as ak-ya-, this root devolved into Old Norse eggya "incite, goad" borrowed as "to egg (on)" in English. It evolved into "edge" in English itself. With the suffixes men and -mer, the root *ak- underwent metathesis (place switching) to ka-, so that ak-men- became Russian kamen' "stone" and "hammer" in English and the Germanic languages. In Greek, with the suffix m, the same root turns up in acme "point, pinnacle" and with r, as acros "high, top" found in acrobat, from acro + bainen, bat- "walk."
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