It's the Word of the Day podcast for July 11th.

Today's word is Zurich, also pronounced Zerick, and spelled X-E-R-I-C.

Ziric is an adjective.

It means characterized by relating to or requiring only E-R-I-C. Zurich is an adjective.

It means characterized by relating to or requiring only a small amount of moisture.

Here's the word used in a sentence from the Colorado Springs Gazette.

Thoughtfully designed Ziric or low-water landscapes can be dynamic, layered, and full of color. Native plants and those adapted to the inter-mountain west provide habitat and food for pollinators and birds while needing a

fraction of the water that bluegrass demands. Few English words begin with the letter X, but of those that do, a number come from

the Greek X, meaning dry. Around the turn of the 20th century, botanists were using the term

xerophyte and xerophytic for plants that were well adapted to survive without much water. But when seeking a more

generic word that included both animals and plants, they came up dry. In a 1926 issue of

ecology, specialists proposed using xeric as a more generalized term for either flora or fauna.

They further suggested that Xerophitic, among other terms, be entirely abandoned as useless and misleading.

Not everyone liked the idea, in fact the Ecological Society of America stated that Zurich was not desirable, preferring

terms such as arid. Others declared that the word should refer only to habitats, not to organisms.

Enough scientists used it anyway, however, and by the 1940s, Zurich was well documented in scientific literature.

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

Visit Miriamwebster.com today for definitions, wordplay, and trending word lookups.