It's Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 13th.
Today's word is brusque, spelled B-R-U-S-Q-U-E.
Brusque is an adjective.
A person may be described as brusque when they are talking or behaving in a very direct,
brief, and unfriendly way.
Brusque can also describe speech that is noticeably short and abrupt.
Here's the word used in a sentence from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.
Archaeologists look down on him because of his working class background,
and his Brusque manner hasn't won him many friends.
He doesn't argue with those he disagrees with, he just walks away.
If you've ever felt swept aside by someone with a brusque manner,
that makes a certain amount of etymological sense.
Brusque, you see, comes ultimately from bruscus, the medieval Latin name for butcher's broom,
a shrub whose bristly leaf-like twigs have long been used for making brooms.
Bruscus was modified to the adjective brusco in Italian, where it meant sour or tart.
French, in turn, changed brusco to brusque, and the word in that form entered English in the 1600s.
English speakers initially applied brusque to tartness in wine,
but the word soon came to describe a harsh and stiff manner,
which is just what you might expect of a word bristling with associations to stiff, scratchy brooms.
With your Word of the Day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.