• joust • Pronunciation: jawst • Hear it and see the graphic at alphadictionary! Part of Speech: Verb, intransitive Meaning: 1. To tilt in a medieval tournament, to ride horses in opposite directions, while attempting to dismount an opponent with a lance (usually knights did this). 2. To jockey for position or engage in verbal combat with one or more other persons. Notes: This word has another spelling, just, listed in the American Heritage and Oxford English dictionaries as current. The spelling above is by far the most widespread. A person who jousts is a jouster and the activity is called jousting. In Play: Take that, you cad!The usual sense of todays Good Word arises when two or more people are in competition for something: Lance Knight and his wife jousted with their children for control of the television set. The only situation where the original sense of todays word is used is in the movie industry: Several stunt men were jousting for the roles of knights in the jousting scenes of the movie. Word History: Todays Good Word comes to us from Old French joster to joust, tilt, from a presumed Vulgar (Street) Latin word iuxtare to approach, come together, meet. The original sense was to be next to, because iuxtare is based on iuxta beside, near, related to iungere join together. We can see iuxta in its original sense in the English borrowing juxtapose. However, the Proto-Indo-European root, yeug- to join, can also be seen in iugular from Latin iugulum collarbone, diminutive of iugum yoke. English acquired this word for its phrase jugular vein. In fact, English yoke is the English result of the same PIE root devolving, unborrowed, through its Germanic family. (Lets all now thank Shirley Farmer for her recommendation of todays Good Word—without any jousting about.)
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 04:15:37 +0000
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