Today's Word

Epoch

EP-uhk or EE-pok

Definition

(noun) A significant period in history or a person’s life; an era marked by notable events or changes.

Example

The invention of the internet ushered in a new epoch in human communication.

Word Origin

From Greek epokhē, meaning “a fixed point in time” or “pause.”

Fun Fact

The word epoch has a timeless feel because it often describes moments that reshape everything—scientifically, culturally, or personally. In geology, an epoch marks a major division of Earth’s timeline, like the Holocene we live in today. In everyday speech, it might refer to turning points in our own lives: the start of a career, a new relationship, or a global shift in how we live. Every epoch reminds us that history—big or small—moves in waves.

Previous Words

Corpulence

Today's Word

Corpulence

KOR-pyoo-lense

Definition

(noun) The state of being excessively overweight; an abundance of body fat significantly beyond what is considered healthy.

Example

The Victorian novelist described his villain with pointed corpulence — every detail of the man’s physical excess carefully deployed to signal moral failure to a readership primed to make exactly that connection.

Word Origin

Corpulence derives from the Latin corpulentia, meaning “fleshiness,” rooted in corpus — “body.” The same root gives us corporeal, corpse, incorporate, and corps — a family of words all built around the physical body in its various states. It entered English in the 15th century as a neutral medical descriptor before acquiring the moral weight that Victorian literature in particular loaded onto it, transforming a clinical observation into a character judgment.

Fun Fact

For most of human history corpulence was considered a sign of wealth, health, and social status — evidence that a person had access to abundant food at a time when most people did not. Rubens painted his ideals of beauty with generous, rounded figures, and Henry VIII’s expanding girth was read by his court as evidence of his power and prosperity rather than his decline. The shift toward viewing corpulence as a moral failing rather than a marker of success happened gradually through the 18th and 19th centuries, accelerated by the rise of industrial capitalism and its emphasis on self-discipline and productive bodies — making corpulence one of the rare words whose cultural baggage tells the entire history of how Western society learned to moralize the human body.

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Epoch

Definition

Example

Word Origin

Previous Words

Corpulence

Corpulence

Definition

Example

Word Origin

Corpulence

Garrulous

Dearth

Propitious

Surfeit