IORSSTU (2)

Word of the Week

A feature wherein TileHead highlights a word that is is especially interesting or unusual (and, incidentally, useful in Scrabble play):

IORSSTU (2)

(unscramble the letters to form this week's word...)

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(answer below, after a little more spoiler space....)

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This week's word is...

TSOURIS (plural-only noun)

• Definition: troubles, worries, woes; aggravation; a series of misfortunes

• Front hooks: (none)
• Back hooks: (none)
• Anagrams: SUITORS (pl. of SUITOR n., one who courts a woman)
• Longer extensions: (none)
• Wraparounds: (none)
• Other Spellings: TSORES, TSORIS, TSURIS, TZURIS, TSOORIS, TSORRISS
• Related Forms: (none)

TileHead Says:

This remarkable word derives from the Yiddish tsore ("trouble, woe") and ultimately from the Hebrew sarar ("to become narrow" or "to be in distress, to be troubled").  Because Yiddish is written in the Hebrew alphabet, English words based on it have gone through TRANSLITERATION ("the representation of letters or words in the characters of another alphabet or script").  And since transliteration is an inexact science, spelling variations abound with such words.  TSOURIS, for example, is notable for having seven valid spellings!  Note that all forms of this word are considered to be plural-only constructions in English: trouble begets trouble, it would seem.

The word is often used in interesting and evocative ways in literature and memoir.

"It wasn't enough you followed me every day for weeks and brought such tsooris raining down on me?" he asked her. "You have to follow me wherever I go like a dog? There's nobody else you can haunt?"
–Gerald Shapiro, From Hunger: Stories (1993)

I see I have much work to do to help my nephew. There is tsouris everywhere my boy, but there is always more if this is all you see.
– Thane Rosenbaum, Elijah Visible: Stories (1999)

She taught him about anxiety and tsuris, about bearing the weight of the world on your shoulders, and – most important of all – about the benefits of an occasional good cry.
– Paul Auster, Timbuktu (2009)