ruly

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The Word of the Day for September 4 is: 

ruly   \ROO-lee\   adjective
     : obedient, orderly 

Example sentence:
     Concert organizers worried that rambunctious fans might get out of hand, 
but the crowd was surprisingly ruly.

Did you know?
     You're probably familiar with "unruly," meaning "not readily controlled or 
disciplined." Have you ever wondered, "Is there a 'ruly' too?" If so, did it 
seem to you that such a word should exist? A little over 150 years ago, someone 
apparently followed that same thought process, creating "ruly" by dropping the 
prefix from "unruly." Whoever did so probably thought the coinage was a new 
one, but that's not quite the case. There had once been another "ruly" with 
much the same meaning as the modern term, but it had been out of use for over 
200 years. Ultimately, "ruly" and "unruly" come from "reuly," a Middle English 
word meaning "disciplined." "Reuly" in turn comes from Middle English "reule," 
a predecessor of "rule."





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