Word of the Day : May 20, 2026
Cordial
adjective KOR-jul
What It Means
- Cordial describes someone or something that is politely pleasant and friendly.
- // All the guests were assembled and given a cordial greeting by the host.
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CORDIAL in Context
“The Burnside post office is a small one-room wooden building profusely planted with flowers all around it. … One enters a tiny vestibule and pushes a buzzer, which brings Christine out of the house, brushing by you into the ‘office’ proper, where she opens the counter window and, with a smile and a toss of her hair, says, in a cordial tone, ‘Now, my dear, what can I do for you?’” — Robert Finch, Summers in Squid Tickle: A Newfoundland Odyssey, 2025
Did You Know?
The Latin root cord- (or cor) is at the heart of the connection between cordial, concord (meaning “harmony”), and discord (meaning “conflict”). Cord- means “heart,” and each of these cord- descendants has something to do with the heart, at least figuratively. Concord, which comes from com- (meaning “together” or “with”) plus -cord, suggests that one heart is with another. Discord combines the prefix dis- (meaning “apart”) with -cord to imply that hearts are apart. Hundreds of years ago, cordial could mean simply “of or relating to the (literal) heart” (the -ial is simply an adjective suffix) but today anything described as cordial—be it a friendly welcome, a compliment, or an agreement—comes from the heart in a figurative sense. Cordial is also used as a noun to refer to a usually sweet liqueur, the name being inspired by the idea that a cordial invigorates the heart.
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