It's the word of the day for October 26th.

Today's word is conyoscenti, also pronounced cognoscenti, and spelled C-O-G-N-O-S-C-E-N-T-E. Cognoscenti is a noun. It refers to a person with expert knowledge in a subject,

and it's usually encountered in its plural form, spelled with an I at the end instead of an E,

preceded by the. Here's the word used in a sentence from lithub.com by Sam Weller.

Even as Ray Bradbury was embraced by the New York cognoscenti, traveling to the city in the fall of 46, drawing the attention of Truman Capote, meeting Gore Vidal, dancing with Carson McCullors at a Manhattan party, Mars beckoned.

Yet he would not dare tell his New York

associates for fear of being laughed out of the room. Cognacente and Connoisseur, both terms for

those in the know, are more than synonyms. They're also linguistic cousins. Both terms descend from

the Latin verb connoissegare, meaning to know, and they're not alone.

You might guess that cognizance and cognition are members of the cognoscure clan.

Do you also recognize a family resemblance in the word recognize?

Can you see through the disguise of the word incognito? Did you have a premonition that we would mention the word precognition? Cognizente itself comes to English by way of Italian and has been a part of the language since the late 1700s. With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.

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