The word of the day for April 10th.
Today's word is glaucus, spelled G-L-A-U-C-O-U-S.
Glaucus as a color word can describe things of two rather different shades,
Glaucus is an adjective.
a light bluish gray or bluish white color, or a pale yellow green.
It can also mean having a powdery or waxy coating that gives a frosted appearance and tends to rub off.
Here's the word used in a sentence from Bedford today.
An enchanting Mediterranean-inspired planting scheme of soft pinks,
silver grays, and glaucus foliage evokes calm and relaxation.
The word glaucus came to English by way of the Latin adjective glaucus from the Greek glaucus, meaning gleaming or gray.
It has been used to describe a range of pale colors from a yellow-green to a bluish-gray.
The word is often found in horticultural writing, describing the pale color of the leaves of various plants,
as well as the powdery bloom that can be found on some fruits and leaves.
Birders may also recognize the word from the names of several birds,
including the glaucus gull and glaucus winged gull, so named for their partially gray plumage.
The stem glauc appears in some other English words,
the most familiar of which is glaucoma, referring to a disease of the eye that can result in gradual loss of vision.
Glauc also appears in the not-so-familiar glaucope, a word used to describe someone with fair hair and blue eyes.
Glaucope is a companion to the word cyanope, spelled C-Y-A-N-O-P-E, the term for someone with fair hair and brown eyes.
With your Word of the Day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.