WOTD

solatium \soh-LEY-shee-uhm\, noun:


1. Something given in compensation for inconvenience, loss or injury.
2. Law. Damages awarded to a plaintiff as compensation for personal suffering or grief arising from an injury.

Perhaps something could be done. And the following week it was. Arthur found himself awarded a solatium of £7, which had accumulated in some overlooked fund, and which the authorities graciously felt could be applied to his purpose.
— Julian Barnes, Arthur & George

It is essential to emphasize that I was in no way “fired” that afternoon; rather, for the record, I merely committed my signature to a number of documents resigning tenure, accepting a none too liberal severance solatium, agreeing to vacate my offices within the week.
— Tim O’Brien, Tomcat in Love

Solatium is a variation on the Medieval Latin word sōlācium, which shares the root with the word solace.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for solatium

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s