Word of the day for May 12th.
Today's word is cattycorner, also pronounced kittycorner.
It's a variant spelling of kittycorner spelled as two words, k-i-t-t-y hyphen c-o-r-n-e-r.
This variant is spelled c-a-t-e-r c-o-r-n-e-r, spelled as entirely one word.
Cattycorner is an adverb or adjective used to describe two things
that are located across from each other on opposite corners.
Here's the word used in a sentence from NBC News.
Positioned on balconies, catty-corner from each other,
Tom Brady completed a pass across Bourbon Street to Rob Gronkowski, proving they 've still got it.
Gronk promptly spiked the football on the fan-filled street below.
Catty corner, with a C, gets its first element from the middle French noun quatre,
meaning four, which English speakers modify to cater,
with a C, and apply to the four-dotted side of a die, a side important in several winning combinations in dice games.
Perhaps because the four spots on a die can suggest an X,
cater eventually came to be used dialectically as a verb meaning to place, move, or cut across diagonally.
Catter was later combined with corner to form cattycorner,
and it described things positioned diagonally from each other.
In one early usage from an 1825 magazine article,
the author marvels at an ancient Roman fresco painting in which a luxurious table is represented as groaning under,
among other choice dishes, four peacocks with their tails set cattycorner.