estival

<font size="-1" face="arial, helvetica"> <p> <strong> <font color="#000066">Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 24, 2020 is:</font> </strong> </p> <p> <strong>estival</strong> &#149; \ESS-tuh-vul\&nbsp; &#149; <em>adjective</em><br /> <p><strong>:</strong> of or relating to the summer</p> </p> <p> <strong>Examples:</strong><br /> <p>"Horror stories are far more <em>estival</em> than autumnal. Before I ever read [Stephen] King, I learned to love being scared at summer camp, where the older kids would tell us ghost stories by campfire and flashlight. Horror ripens when the pole is tilted toward the sun—when school is out, children are unsupervised, heat makes people crazy, unexplored woods begin to beckon…." — <a href="https://theweek.com/articles/851641/summers-are-stephen-king">Jeva Lange, <em>The Week</em>, 10 July 2019</a></p> <p>"As an <em>estival</em> nod, fresh summer daisies bedecked the tables that were covered with blue, white and red linens, the order of the French colors." — Nell Nolan, <em>The Advocate</em> (Baton Rouge, Louisiana), 19 July 2016</p> </p> <p> <strong>Did you know?</strong><br /> <p><em>Estival</em> and <em><a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/festival">festival</a></em> look so much alike that you might think they're very closely related, but that isn't the case. <em>Estival</em> traces back to <em>aestas</em>, which is the Latin word for "summer" (and which also gave us <em><a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/estivate">estivate</a></em>, a verb for spending the summer in a torpid state—a sort of hot-weather equivalent of <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hibernate">hibernating</a>). <em>Festival</em> also comes from Latin, but it has a different and unrelated root. It derives from <em>festivus</em>, a term that means "festive" or "merry." <em>Festivus</em> is also the ancestor of <em><a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/festive">festive</a></em> and <em