transpontine

****************************************************************
Attention word gurus:  try WORD SWEEP!, the first board game to feature 
Merriam-Webster definitions! Available at Borders Bookstores.
http://www.wordsweep.com
****************************************************************

The Word of the Day for August 9 is:

transpontine   \trans-PAHN-tyne\   adjective 
    *1 : situated on the farther side of a bridge
     2 British : situated on the south side of the Thames

Example sentence: 
     Bella recommended a transpontine restaurant for our evening rendezvous, so 
we took a cab across the East River from our hotel in Manhattan and met her in 
Queens.

Did you know? 
     Usually the prefix "trans-," meaning "across," allows for a reciprocal 
perspective. Whether you're in Europe or America, for example, transoceanic 
countries are countries across the ocean from where you are. But that's not the 
way it originally worked with "transpontine." The "pont-" in "transpontine" is 
from the Latin "pons," meaning "bridge," and the bridge in this case was, at 
first, any bridge that crossed the River Thames in the city of London. "Across 
the bridge" meant on one side of the river only -- the south side. That's where 
the theaters that featured popular melodramas were located, and Victorian 
Londoners first used "transpontine" to distinguish them from their more 
respectable "cispontine" ("situated on the nearer side of a bridge") 
counterparts north of the Thames.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.





You Are Subscribed As: gclw-mw-wod7@xxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe, change your e-mail address or to subscribe to the html
version of Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day, featuring audio
pronunciations, please visit:

http://mw.drhinternet.net/sm/wod/changeofaddress.iphtml

(c) 2007 by Merriam-Webster, Incorporated

Merriam-Webster, Inc.
47 Federal Street
P.O. Box 281
Springfield, MA 01102