Word of the Day

: July 3, 2019

sedulous

adjective SEJ-uh-lus

What It Means

1 : involving or accomplished with careful perseverance

2 : diligent in application or pursuit

sedulous in Context

"To start: a black screen, her name in white. As the overture plays, the scene unfolds with sedulous magic—smoke and steam coil and unfurl, lightening the screen and darkening her name. A man with a lantern appears, tumbling through space, as the architecture of a train station emerges through the condensation of vapor." — Irene Hsiao, The Chicago Reader, 19 Feb. 2019

"The charter elementary school where I work, while pedagogically inspiring and impressively staffed, is a reflection of our education system as a whole: sedulous people stretched too thin; classrooms with too many bodies; little, if any, funding." — Natalie Babcock, The Los Angeles Times, 9 Dec. 2018

Did You Know?

No fooling—the word sedulous ultimately comes from Latin se dolus, which literally means "without guile." Those two words were eventually melded into one, sedulo, meaning "sincerely" or "diligently," and from that root developed Latin sedulus and English sedulous. Don't let the sed- beginning mislead you; sedulous is not related to words such as sedentary or sedate (those derive from the Latin verb sedēre, meaning "to sit"). Sedulous people are not the sedate or sedentary sort. They're the hardworking types Scottish author Samuel Smiles must have had in mind when he wrote in his 1859 book Self-Help, "Sedulous attention and painstaking industry always mark the true worker."