Word of the Day

: July 13, 2015

estival

adjective ESS-tuh-vul

What It Means

: of or relating to the summer

estival in Context

The children were reveling in their weeks of summer vacation, filling their school-free estival afternoons with swimming and playing.

"Guests heeded the dress suggestion and came in the estival attire requested on the Betty Hunley-created invitation: 'white linen, seersucker or summer chic.'" - Nell Nolan, Times-Picayune (New Orleans, Louisiana), July 31, 2010

Did You Know?

Estival and festival look so much alike that you might think they're very closely related, but that isn't the case. Estival traces back to aestas, which is the Latin word for "summer" (and which also gave us estivate, a verb for spending the summer in a torpid state-a sort of hot-weather equivalent of hibernation). Festival also comes from Latin, but it has a different and unrelated root. It derives from festivus, a term that means "festive" or "merry." Festivus is also the ancestor of festive and festivity as well as the much rarer festivous (which also means "festive") and infestive, meaning "not merry, mirthless."