Tidy Lookup
All sites11
Curious Word of the Daycuriouswordoftheday.com

mirative

noun /ˈmɪɹətɪv/

  1. A grammatical mood that expresses (surprise at) unexpected revelations or new information.

    uncountable

    Although the Maidu 'evidential' -wéw (Shipley 1964:45) might correspond somewhat to the Washo visual, and the (unexemplified) Sierra Miwok 'circumstantial evidence' marker taˀ, tat, ˀiš- (Freeland 1951:169) may correspond to the Washo inferential (mirative).

Where it comes from

Possibly from (ad)mirative, from French admiratif (“tending to admire”) (used by French diplomat and scholar Auguste Dozon (1822–1890), imitating the use of the Ancient Greek ἀπροσδόκητος (aprosdókētos, “unexpected”) in a similar context by Albanian translator and scholar Kostandin Kristoforidhi (1826–1895)), from Latin admīrārī, present active infinitive of admīror (“to admire, respect; to be astonished, to be surprised at”), from ad- (“to”) + mīror (“to admire, marvel at; to be amazed or astonished at”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *smey- (“to be glad, laugh”)).

Adapted from the Wiktionary entry mirative (CC BY-SA 4.0).

← minorativemirific →

Another random word More words starting with M