Monday, November 6, 2017

Interesting words: Punctate

According to Merriam-Webster, punctate (rhymes with drunk state) is an adjective and means "marked with minute spots or depressions" or "characterized by dots or points". That's a useful word!  It saves a bunch of words and makes a clear description of a situation easier. You could use it to describe a skin condition or a leaf or findings from an MRI or things like that.

There is a noun form "punctation".

Don't get this mixed up with punctuation! But, if a piece of writing uses ellipsis extensively, you could call it "punctate punctuation"!

The etymology is from Latin punctatus, then Latin punctum (point).  It's rarely used (about 1 in 5,000,000 words, per Google Ngram) and is in decline, for some reason, having peaked in about 1910.








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