EEILLTVY

Word of the Week

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

EEILLTVY

(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...

VELLEITY (n. pl. VELLEITIES)

• Definition: A mere wish, desire, or inclination without accompanying action or effort; a low degree of desire

• Front hooks: (none)
• Back hooks: (none)
• Anagrams: (none)
• Longer extensions: (none)
• Wraparounds: (none)
• Other Spellings: (none)
• Related Forms: (none)

TileHead says:

This word seems to have fallen out of fashion, which is a pity given that it describes such a common feeling or situation.  VELLEITY stems from the Latin velle ("to will, to wish"), the same root that also gave English words such as BENEVOLENT and MALEVOLENT.  It has been used in English since the early 1600s and still makes rare appearances in modern writings:

The antecedent will of God is only a velleitie or wishing that a thing might be.
– Francis White, A Replie to Jesuit Fishers Answere (1624)

"He had no fixed intentions, only rebellious impulses, blind longings and velleities."
– James Anthony Froude, Thomas Carlyle: A History of His Life in London, 1834-1881 (1884)

The old fear that Lenora might divorce him and go away with Morris Langdon did not trouble him any more. Any inclination he had once had toward the Major seemed now a mere velleity compared to his feelings for the soldier.
– Carson McCullers, Reflections in a Golden Eye (2000)

Finally, the following Ogden Nash poem explains the word with both accuracy and humor:

Seated one day at the dictionary I was pretty weary and also pretty ill at ease,
Because a word I had always liked turned out not to be a word at all, and suddenly I found myself among the v's.
And suddenly among the v's I came across a new word which was a word called velleity,
So the new word I found was better than the old word I lost, for which I thank my tutelary deity,
Because velleity is a word which gives me great satisfaction,
Because do you know what it means, it means low degree of volition not prompting to action,
And I always knew I had something holding me back but I didn't know what,
And it's quite a relief to know it isn't a conspiracy, it's only velleity that I've got...
– Excerpt from Ogden Nash's "Where There's a Will, There's Velleity" (1938)