officious

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The Word of the Day for October 30 is:

officious   \uh-FISH-us\   adjective 
    *1 : volunteering one's services where they are neither asked nor needed : 
meddlesome 
     2 : informal, unofficial 

Example sentence: 
     Jane wanted to help her neighbors, but she was hesitant to offer 
assistance for fear of being perceived as officious.

Did you know? 
     Don't mistake "officious" for a rare synonym of "official." Both words 
stem from the Latin noun "officium" (meaning "service" or "office"), but they 
have very different meanings. When the suffix "-osus" ("full of") was added to 
"officium," Latin "officiosus" came into being, meaning "eager to serve, help, 
or perform a duty." When this adjective was borrowed into English in the 16th 
century as "officious," it carried the same meaning. Early in the 17th century, 
however, "officious" began taking on a negative sense to describe a person who 
offers unwanted help. This pejorative sense has driven out the original "eager 
to help" sense to become the predominant meaning of the word in Modern English. 
"Officious" can also mean "of an informal or unauthorized nature," but that 
sense isn't especially common. 





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