Word of the Day

: October 13, 2016

univocal

adjective yoo-NIV-uh-kul

What It Means

1 : having one meaning only

2 : unambiguous

univocal in Context

The president declared that it was important to send a univocal message of support to the beleaguered country.

"Often cited as America's greatest indigenous art form, jazz wriggles away from any univocal definition, resisting the confines of a single track like water flowing on broken ground." — Charles Donelan, The Santa Barbara (California) Independent, 23 Sept. 2010

Did You Know?

Earliest known print evidence of univocal, in the sense of "having one meaning only," dates the word to the mid-1500s, somewhat earlier than its more familiar antonym equivocal (meaning "often misleadingly subject to two or more interpretations"). Both words trace back to the Latin noun vox, which means "voice." The prefix uni- ("one") was combined with vox to create the Late Latin word univocus, from which English speakers borrowed univocal. Univocal was indeed once used in the sense of "speaking in one voice" (or "unanimous") as its etymology would imply, but that use is now obsolete.