Word of the Day

Did You Know?

The Middle English "afronten," the ancestor of the Modern English verb "affront," was borrowed from the Anglo-French "afrunter," a verb which means "to defy" but which also has the specific meaning "to strike on the forehead" or "to slap on the face." These more literal senses reveal the word's Latin origins, a combination of the Latin prefix "ad-," meaning "to" or "towards," and "front-, frons," which means "forehead" (and which is also the source of the English word "front"). While the striking or slapping sense of "afrunter" was not adopted by English, it is alluded to in the oldest uses of "afronten" in Middle English in the sense of "to insult especially to the face."