serotinal

[prettygoodword]

serotinal (si-ROT-uhn-uhl, ser-uh-TEYEN-uhl) - adj., of, pertaining to, or occurring in late summer.


A good first word for September, when here at least it feels like the thunderstorms have finally been cut off (though no doubt they'll sputter for a few weeks more) and the light as I come in to work is lower and more golden. The shoulder season of summer. Adopted around 1900 (give or take a few years) from Latin sērōtinus, coming late (in time).

---L.

Comments

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

ser-uh-TEYEN-uhl

That scans to me as five syllables. Is the penult perhaps "TINE"?

Also, if these pronunciation guides are your own: gosh, you have a lot of schwas in unstressed syllables. :) And Midwestern fronting/raising, at least partly. Californians are charged (rightly) with schwa abuse via slurring, but it took me a moment to work out the first suggested pronunciation, too. Interesting.

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

Pronunciations are cribbed from Dictionary.com, mostly, with some translation -- particularly for the long I sound: "teyen" is indeed how I'd render the pronunciation of tine. I'm not happy with it, because especially with trailing consonant it's not very clear, but I've not seen a better one in low-ascii characters. I do sometimes convert an unstressed -e- or -i- to a schwa-ish -uh- in the pronunciation guide, as well.

FWIW, I was raised in the Mid-Atlantic with some Appalachian and Eastern Shore* influences, but a couple decades in the Southwest has added something of an Intermountain drawl. Maybe that's part of it?

* Most notably, I really wish the second-person plural "y'uns" was better recognized.

---L.

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

Ah--I rarely visit dictionary.com and didn't recognize its influence. For me "eye" and the -i- in "tine" differ; former is farther back. Fair about non-IPA representations; I noticed while sounding out these two bits because "uh" is lower than schwa for me (noted that you've typed "schwa-ish").

Possibly the Intermountain/SW part, yes. One of my best friends--now a long-distance NMSU employee--has gained a bit of a Southwestern drawl, which sits oddly with the clipped prairie and Waterloo-influenced Canadian of her early childhood and is thus really obvious; without having visited her, I doubt I'd be able to place any version of Southwestern speech. But here, probably it's mostly dictionary.com, which is legitimately Midwestern-weighted. :))

"Y'uns" would be handy, yes. I've gained "y'all" studiedly for when "you guys" simply won't work for one reason or another, but "y'all" is only because of lack of auditor's ambiguity.

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

Heh -- I've met prairie Canadians who've moved here long enough to gain a bit of Intermountain drawl, and it is an amusing combination. A Vancouver base blends with it much more naturally.

And yeah, "eye" is slightly further back than "tine." FWIW, I use dictionary.com as my guide because its primary entries are already non-IPA.

---L.