Word of the day: tyro

[OldFeller]

I was working on a word puzzle (much like a crostic puzzle) and through cross solving the quote I was able to determine that the 4 letter word for "beginner" was TYRO.

I never heard of it so googling it I got the following. (Apparently, you only need to know it if you're reading Herman Melville (Moby Dick?)....

noun​

ty·ro ˈtī-(ˌ)rō

plural tyros

: a beginner in learning : NOVICE

Did you know?​

The word tyro is hardly a newcomer to Western language. It comes from the Latin tiro, which means "young soldier," "new recruit," or more generally, "novice." The word was sometimes spelled tyro as early as Medieval Latin, and can be spelled tyro or tiro in English (though tyro is the more common American spelling). Use of tyro in English has never been restricted to the original "young soldier" meaning of the Latin term. Writers in the 17th and 18th centuries wrote of tyros in various fields and occupations, and Herman Melville used tyro to refer to men new to whaling and life at sea. The word also has a long history of being used attributively—that is, directly before another noun—in phrases like "tyro reporter" and "tyro actors."

 

[dilettante]

I've seen it a lot, but I also used to read a lot of stuff written in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. I carried on in the genre through at least the 70s.

 

[palides2021]

Thanks for that info, @OldFeller! I didn't know that. If the last letter of the word was changed to "I", so it became "tyri" then that would mean cheese in Greek.