{"id":21653,"date":"2021-11-25T15:45:08","date_gmt":"2021-11-25T15:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=21653"},"modified":"2021-11-25T15:45:10","modified_gmt":"2021-11-25T15:45:10","slug":"lukewarm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=21653","title":{"rendered":"Lukewarm"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If something is <strong>lukewarm<\/strong> [\u02cclu\u02d0k\u02c8w\u0254\u02d0m \/ \u02ccluk\u02c8w\u0254\u0279m], it is somewhere between warm and cool. Or you might be <strong>lukewarm<\/strong> (unenthusiastic) about an idea or proposal.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/blog\/lukewarm.gif\" alt=\"A word cloud based on the contents of this post\" width=\"629\" height=\"360\"><\/p>\n<p>Something that is a bit cooler than <strong>lukewarm<\/strong>, or something that you&#8217;re less enthusiastic about is <strong>lukecold<\/strong>, a rare word that I hadn&#8217;t heard before.<\/p>\n<p>The word <strong>luke<\/strong> comes from the Middle English <strong>lew<\/strong> (tepid), which is apparently still used in some dialects in northern England, and also in Scots, where it means lukewarm, tepid or slightly heated. That comes from the Old English <em>hl\u0113ow<\/em> (warm, sunny), from the Proto-Germanic <em>*hliwjaz\/*hl\u0113waz<\/em> (lukewarm), from the Proto-Indo-European <em>*\u1e31al(w)e-\/*\u1e31l\u0113w-<\/em> (warm, hot).<\/p>\n<p>Some words from the same Proto-Germanic root include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Danish: <strong>ly<\/strong> = shelter<\/li>\n<li>Dutch: <strong>lauw<\/strong> [l\u0251u\u032f] = lukewarm (temperature); cold, indifferent; nice, cool, chill, and <strong>flauw<\/strong> = boring, tasteless, uninspired; languid, weak, vague, hazy (via Old French)<\/li>\n<li>French: <strong>flou<\/strong> [flu] = fuzzy, blurred, blurry, unclear<\/li>\n<li>German: <strong>lau<\/strong> [la\u028a\u032f] = lukewarm, tepid; mild; cushy, easy<\/li>\n<li>Icelandic: <strong>hl\u00fdr<\/strong> [l\u0325i\u02d0r] = warm<\/li>\n<li>Norwegian: <strong>ly<\/strong> [ly\u02d0] = lukewarm, mild; shelter<\/li>\n<li>Swedish: <strong>ly<\/strong> = hangout<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>Sources: <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/lukewarm#English\">Wiktionary<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/dsl.ac.uk\/entry\/snd\/lew_adj_n_v1\">Dictionaries of the Scots Language \/<br \/>\nDictionars o the Scots Leid<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If something is lukewarm [\u02cclu\u02d0k\u02c8w\u0254\u02d0m \/ \u02ccluk\u02c8w\u0254\u0279m], it is somewhere between warm and cool. Or you might be lukewarm (unenthusiastic) about an idea or proposal. Something that is a bit cooler than lukewarm, or something that you&#8217;re less enthusiastic about is lukecold, a rare word that I hadn&#8217;t heard before. The word luke comes from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,10,26,33,44,45,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-language","category-middle-english","category-old-english-aenglisc","category-proto-germanic","category-proto-indo-european","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21653"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21659,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21653\/revisions\/21659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}