Vicissitudious

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

  1. characterized by alternating sequences of contrasting conditions, fortunes, or circumstances that shift unpredictably
  2. marked by frequent alternations between opposing states or situations that create instability and change
  3. Prone to undergo rapid and unexpected variations in conditions or fortunes

Etymology: A syllable has gone missing from this word. The correct form is "vicissitudinous", and the lost "-in-" is no slip of the pen. It is a piece of Latin grammar. Latin nouns ending in "-tūdō" changed their stem when declined, so "vicissitūdō" appears only in the nominative and vocative singular, while every other form is built on "vicissitūdin-". English adjectives were made from that longer stem, which is why multitude gives multitudinous, platitude gives platitudinous, and latitude gives latitudinarian. Drop the syllable and you get vicissitudious. It is a natural guess for anyone reasoning from the English noun alone, but not a form the Latin allows. The root is stranger still. "Vicis" meant a turn, a change, or one's place in a sequence. It was so defective that it had no nominative case at all and survived only in its other forms. Yet it has been remarkably productive. It sits behind vice-president, a deputy who acts "in place of" another, and behind vicar and vicarious. Its ablative "vice", meaning "by turn", gives us "vice versa", "the turn being reversed". From it Latin formed "vicissitūdō", meaning alternation, interchange, a taking of turns. English borrowed vicissitude in the 1500s, probably through French. At first it kept that orderly Latin sense: the regular succession of night and day, or of the seasons, one thing reliably giving way to another. Later the meaning extended to changes of circumstance or fortune, often unwelcome ones. A word for orderly alternation came to be used mainly for unpredictable change. The adjective, properly "vicissitudinous", carries that later sense: given to sudden, unforeseen reversals. Its own spelling has proved just as liable to change.