Wordy Wednesday

Alright, I'm trying something a little different. Maybe a weekly feature will give me reason to write here. The new feature is called Wordy Wednesday, a spin-off of the ever-popular Wordless Wednesday. What is Wordy Wednesday, you ask? Well, other than an attempt to inspire this writer to get writing, it's also an attempt at bettering myself. I'm going to find a word and write about it. Hopefully, I can find some words that I don't already know. Nothing wrong with building vocabulary, after all.

Okay, explanation over! Time for today's word: diaeresis. The word has Greek roots and comes from the verb diairesis, which means "to divide." It indicates the separate pronunciation of two adjacent vowels in the same word, like cooperate. This is shown via a punctuation mark that looks like this: coöperate. A diaeresis is commonly used in the German language as well as Dutch and French.

Of course, diaeresis has a few other definitions, all of them stemming from the root. Free dictionary gives an added use in poetry, where a diaeresis is a break in a line of verse where the end of a word and the end of a metrical foot coincide. Dieresis, which has a slightly different spelling, is a medical term indicating surgical separation of two parts.