hodiernal

hodiernal

English

WOTD – 28 June 2020

Etymology

From hodiern (“of this day, present-day”) +‎ -al (suffix forming adjectives).[1] Hodiern is derived from Latin hodiernus (“of today, today’s; present, present-day; actual”), from hodiē (“today”) (from hōc (“this (thing)”) + diē (“day”) (ultimately Proto-Indo-European *dyew- (“to be bright; heaven, sky”))) + -rnus (suffix forming adjectives).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /həʊdiˈɜːnl̩/, /hɒ-/

• Audio (RP)

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /hoʊdiˈɝnəl/, /hɑ-/

• Audio (GA)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)nəl
• Hyphenation: ho‧di‧ern‧al

Adjective

hodiernal (not comparable)

1. (archaic or literary, rare outside grammar) Of or pertaining to the present day or today; hodiern.
   • 1716, M[yles] D[avies], “A Supplement to the Dissertation upon the Latin Drama, Styl’d, Pallas Anglicana; […]”, in Athenæ Britannicæ: Or, A Critical History of the Oxford and Cambridge Writers and Writings, […], London: Printed for the author, OCLC 731579112, part III, pages 39–40:

     But after all that can be ſaid of the Doctrine of the Greek Church, one may in a great Meaſure apply to the hodiernal Grecians, not only what was ſaid of the Grecians by St. Paul, Tit[us] 1. 12, 13. but alſo what the Pagan Satyriſt declares of them in general, Græculus eſuriens in cœlum, juſſeris, ibit. [A hungry Greek will go into heaven, if you command. — Juvenal, Satire III.]

   • 1765, William Stevenson, “Poetical Characteristics; or, An Estimate of the Advantages of Rhyming. In Three Cantos.”, in Original Poems on Several Subjects. In Two Volumes, volume II, Printed by A[lexander] Donaldson and J[ohn] Reid. […], OCLC 316381209, canto I, page 27:

     Thus to make ſounds, with bold pretence, / Paſs with the gaping croud for ſenſe, / As, deck'd in plumes of gaudy hue, / The jackdaw would be peacock too; / Theſe patch up (well Reviewers know it) / In hodiernal phraſe, a poet.

   • 1793, Wyndham Beawes, “His Majesty’s Ordinances for the Military, Civil, and Economical Government of His Fleet: With His Motives for Reducing Them to One Body”, in A Civil, Commercial, Political, and Literary History of Spain and Portugal. [...] In Two Volumes, volume I, London: R. Faulder, […]; E. Jeffrey, […]; B. Law, […]; and J. Sewell, […], OCLC 1102985140, chapter CXXXVII, page 538:

     And the ſaid Orphan Boys ſhall [...] alſo be aggregated to the Maſter Carpenters and Calkers, who ſhall be obliged to take one of theſe (in the Places where they ſhall work) beſides the Apprentice which they preciſely are to teach, and ſhall feed and clothe him until he be fit for a Journeyman, and gain as ſuch hodiernal Wages; [...]

   • 1820 March, [Walter Scott], chapter II, in The Monastery. A Romance. […], volume II, Edinburgh: […] Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Co., and John Ballantyne, […], OCLC 892089409, pages 48–49:

     "Credit me, fairest lady," said the knight, "that such is the cunning of our English courtiers of the hodiernal strain, that, as they have infinitely refined upon the plain and rusticial discourse of our fathers, [...] so I hold it ineffably and unutterably improbable, that those who may succeed us in that garden of wit and courtesy shall alter or amend it.["]

   • 1841, R[alph] W[aldo] Emerson, “Essay X. Circles.”, in Essays, Boston, Mass.: James Munroe and Company, OCLC 3778020, pages 257–258:

     Literature is a point outside of our hodiernal circle, through which a new one may be described. The use of literature is to afford us a platform whence we may command a view of our present life, a purchase by which we may move it.

   • 1868, Kenelm Henry Digby, “The Supernatural”, in Hours with the First Falling Leaves, London: F[rederick] S[tartridge] Ellis, […], OCLC 730079, page 47:

     In truth, a purpose always is fulfill'd, / When hodiernal miracles are will'd; / They still proclaim the Being Personal / Who moves behind accomplishing them all.

   • 1869, Richard F[rancis] Burton, “Santa Lucia to Jaguára”, in Explorations of the Highlands of the Brazil; […], volume II, London: Tinsley Brothers, […], OCLC 82504824, page 21:

     D. Conrada, still in her teens, was the mother of three children and the widow of a tropeiro: she made coffee, warmed our beef, and sat chatting with us till we slept—a rare and recordable incident of hodiernal Brazilian travel in the Far West.

   • 1898, Thomas Hardy, “To Outer Nature”, in Wessex Poems and Other Verses, New York, N.Y.; London: Harper & Brothers, OCLC 5959488, stanza 6, page 151:

     Why not sempiternal / Thou and I? Our vernal / Brightness keeping, / Time outleaping: / Passed the hodiernal!

   • 1921 May, John V. A. Weaver, “A Poem in American”, in Frank Crowninshield, editor, Vanity Fair, volume 16, number 3, New York, N.Y.: Vanity Fair Publishing Company, OCLC 423870134, page 26:

     [...] Mr. Weaver is the first consistently to employ the hodiernal speech of the American mass for serious narrative and lyric uses.

   • 1965, “Unit 10”, in Earl W[ilson] Stevick, editor, Shona: Basic Course […] (Foreign Service Institute Basic Course Series), Washington, D.C.: Foreign Service Institute, Department of State, OCLC 609777543, page 100:

     Almost without exception, verbs in this tense are used to refer to events that have taken place during the same day or during the preceding night. It may therefore be called the ‘past today’ tense, or the ‘hodiernal’ tense (from the Latin word for ‘today’).

   • 2008, Mark L. O. Van de Velde, “Tense, Aspect, Mood and Negation”, in A Grammar of Eton (Mouton Grammar Library; 46), Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN, ISSN 0933-7636, section 2.1.1 (Tense), page 234:

     Now that it is clear that hodiernal past, hesternal past and remote past are purely temporal categories, it must be established how exactly they divide the timeline. The difference between hodiernal and hesternal past is rigid and is based on objective grounds, i.e. on actual time rather than perceived temporal distance. The hodiernal past is used only for situations that occurred on the same day as the temporal reference point.

   • 2015 December, David Odden, “Bantu Phonology”, in Oxford Handbooks Online‎, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, DOI:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935345.013.59, archived from the original on 26 June 2020, section 4.3 (Melodic Tones):

     In apparently all tonal Bantu languages, the tonal system is augmented by tone patterns associated with certain grammatical categories, especially verb tenses, which are usually realized as the positioning of additional tones in some position in the stem. These are referred to as melodic H patterns. [...] For example, in Kerewe, the remote past and hodiernal perfective in (58a) have whatever H is lexically present on the root (plus tone doubling).

Coordinate terms

• crastinal (rare)
• hesternal (archaic or literary, rare outside grammar)
• nudiustertian (obsolete, rare)

Derived terms

• hodiernally
• hodiernal tense
• prehodiernal

Translations

of or pertaining to the present day or today

Dutch: actueel (nl), huidig (nl), tegenwoordig (nl) French: d'aujourd'hui German: heutig (de) Latin: hodiernus Portuguese: hodierno (pt) Spanish: hodierno, odierno

References

1. “hodiernal, adj.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1899; “hodiernal, adj.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

• hodiernal tense on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• Holderian