cecutiency means partial blindness, or a tendency toward blindness. It carries an Arena rating of 1333, earned across 16 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, cecutiency ranks #900 of 17,131 for Scariest Words, #1,975 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #2,474 of 17,151 for The Improbable, #4,532 of 17,149 for Most Exacting Words.
Why “cecutiency” is a great word
CECUTIENCY — [Noun] A state of partial blindness, or a constitutional tendency toward dimness of sight. From the Latin verb caecūtīre ("to be blind"), itself from the adjective caecus ("blind"), with the addition of the English suffix -cy forming a noun of state or condition. Unlike "cecity" (which denotes total blindness) or "amaurosis" (which describes a specific, often sudden medical loss), cecutiency is the gradual, encroaching dimness. It is the world seen through a frosted pane at twilight, the stubborn smudge on a lens that cannot be wiped clean, and the inexorable narrowing of the field to a single, diminishing point of light—a quiet rehearsal for a darkness that arrives not by a sudden blow, but by an insistent, patient wearing away.
Etymology
From Latin caecūtīre (“to be blind”), from caecus (“blind”).
noun
- Partial blindness, or a tendency toward blindness.e.g.“[T]here is in them [moles] no cecity, yet more then a cecutiency[…]” — 1646, Thomas Browne, “Of Molls”, in Pseudodoxia Epidemica: […], London: […] T[homas] H[arper] for Edward Dod, […], →OCLC, 3rd book, page 152:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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