Word of the Day #1: Weissnichtwo
I love this word! Admittedly, not an easy word to slip into everyday discourse, but a delight to say with its staccato of shortening syllables.
English speakers seeing weissnichtwo for the first time invariably wrestle with its pronunciation. The temptation to anglicize the last three letters seems too great leading most to pronounce the word with an ending tü. However, noting its Germanic origin, it easily fragments in to three common German words: weiss (part of the verb wissen, to know), nicht (not) and wo (where), furnishing a literal translation as ‘know not where’.
Weissnichtwo is a spelling bee favorite, sometimes appearing in the early rounds of the National Spelling Bee (it was spelled correctly in round two of this year’s national bee) and mentioned by several spellers over the years as a favorite word.
Word: weiss·nicht·wo
Pronunciation:
Part of speech: noun, usually capitalized
Etymology: fr. Weissnichtwo, imaginary city in the satirical work Sartor Resartus (1833-34) by Thomas Carlyle, fr. G weiss nicht wo (I) know not where.
Meaning: an indefinite, unknown, or imaginary place1
References
1. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, p. 2594