Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar — another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word:
VICISSITUDES
All is flux, said Heraclitus, and we know all too well that many changes are not for the better. So it's useful to have
vicissitudes
(pronounced vuh-SISS-i-tyoods), a word identifying sudden changes in circumstances or fortune, usually unwelcome or unpleasant. It's a straight take into English of the Latin
vicissitudo
, which rises from
vicis
, "turn" or "change."
Example:
From Cicero: "Nothing contributes to the entertainment of the reader more, than the change of times and the vicissitudes of fortune."