Today's Word "Incunabulum"
Published in Vocabulary
incunabulum \in-kyeh-NAEH-byu-lehm\ (noun) - 1 : A book printed in the earliest period of printing, especially from Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in 1436 up to 1500; an incunable; 2 : any product of the earliest stage of development; 3 : a cocoon.
"Gratefully he decanted his own incunabulum from his library, a piddling back-catalog item which none of his ancestors had ever been able to sell..." -- Donald Kingsbury, "Psychohistorical Crisis"
Today's word is Latin incunabulum "swaddling clothes, cradle" composed of in "in" + cunabula the diminutive of cunae "cradle." This word is related to "cemetery," which comes from Latin "coemeterium," borrowed from Greek koimeterion "sleeping chamber, burial place," a locative noun from the verb koiman "to put to sleep." Sanskrit sete "he lies, sleeps" is another relative and, possibly, Shiva "the auspicious one," the oldest of the Indian gods.
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