It's the word of the day for August 5th.
Today's word is colloquial, spelled C-O-L-L-O-Q-U-I-A-L.
Colloquial is an adjective.
It's used with words like term and word and expression to describe language
that is used in familiar and informal conversation.
Here's the word used in a sentence from the Green Bay Press Gazette.
The American woodcock is a native North American bird species found in Wisconsin
and much of the eastern United States and Canada.
Known by a host of colloquial names, including Timberdoodle, Bogsucker,
and Mudsnipe, the species is about the size of the American robin.
The noun colloquy has, since the 15th century, referred to a conversation or dialogue.
And when the adjective colloquial was formed in the mid-18th century, it had a similar focus.
Both words trace back to the Latin verb colloquy meaning to converse.
Over time, however, colloquial developed a more specific meaning related to language
that is most suited to informal conversation, and it ultimately garnered a secondary use for language
that is so informal as to be inappropriate for a given situation.
For instance, when writing an academic paper about Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton,
it would not serve to say that the crew of the Endurance was in quite a pickle
when they became trapped in ice off the Caird Coast.
Although the word pickle does indeed mean a difficult situation in this context,