Word of the Day: Obverse

I often edit academic writing, and one of the perks of doing so, besides learning about subjects I didn’t get the chance to take classes on, is running across words I have never seen before. I mean, you can discover new words in any kind of writing, but there’s usually a higher chance of doing so in specialized writing, like academic writing, than in mainstream writing. I said writing four times in that sentence. Holy cow, lady, buy a thesaurus. 

I read a lot, so coming across words with which I’m completely unfamiliar doesn’t happen that often. (Coming across words with which I’m vaguely familiar but unsure enough about that I need to check the dictionary to make sure they’re being used correctly, on the other hand, happens ALL THE TIME.) So my reaction to a new word goes something like this: 

Me: What the heck, “obverse”? What does that mean? That is so not a word. What was this writer thinking? He made this up and I will prove it.

Me: *fetches dictionary*

Me: Yes, lalala, flipping through pages, I love this dictionary, look at all these wooorrds, I have the best job, okay, here are the O’s, it’ll come after objurgation, after obstreperous…

Me: Oh. Obverse. There you are.

Me: Coooooolll. 

So! Obverse is totally a word! And it’s a pretty neat word, too. It can be an adjective or a noun, and it means “facing the observer or opponent,” “having the base narrower than the top,” “opposite”; the front side of a coin, “a counterpart having the opposite orientation or force,” or “a proposition inferred immediately from another by denying the opposite of what the given proposition affirms.”*

Some in-use examples of obverse:

I stood obverse to my foe, both our swords raised, ready to begin.

The leaves of a four-leaf clover are obverse.

On the color wheel, red is the obverse of green.

The obverse of a quarter features the face of George Washington.

“The obverse of ‘all A is B’ is ‘no A is not B.’”**

These leaves are totes obverse, y’all.

There’s also a regular adverbial form, obversely, though evidently Microsoft Word doesn’t like it. Eh, it also doesn’t like “objurgation.” Fussy.

What new words have you learned lately?

*Definitions taken from Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 11^th edition, page 857.

**Also taken from Merriam-Webster.