It's Merriam-Webster's word of the day for July 17th.

Today's word is Oceos, also pronounced Oteos, and spelled Oteo, Oteo, S E, Oce is an adjective.

It's a formal word typically used to describe either something that serves no useful purpose or something that has no use or effect.

Here's the word used in a sentence from The Guardian by Martin Kettle.

Christian Tetslav has only begun to play the concerto recently, but it was a masterly performance.

The concentrated tension, always the hallmark of Tetslav's playing never flagged. In other hands an

encore might have been Osios after all that, but Tetslav's playing of the

Adante from Bach's A minor solo sonata proved just as magical and seemed to draw the entire

hall into its hushed meditations.

In this life some pursuits seem destined to set the world on fire while others simply aren't worth the candle.

That's where the word Oceos comes in.

The adjective traces back to the Latin noun Oteum meaning leisure. When

Oceos was first used in the late 18th century, it described things that like leisure,

at least according to some are pointless or otherwise

produce no useful result as in it would be Oceos to ask you about the book

since you haven't read it yet by the mid-19th century it was also being used to describe

people who indulge a bit too much in leisure and idleness, your loafers, layabouts, and lazy bones, and thus need a fire lit under them.

Both Oceos and the noun Oceosity, which predates the adjective by several centuries, are usually

found in formal writing, but should you have a burning desire

to do so, feel free to drop either into casual contexts at your leisure.

With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.

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