Meaning
A member of the Roman college of priests who acted as representatives in disputes with foreign nations.
Etymology
Origin: Latin
From Latin fētiālis (“priest who sanctioned treaties and demanded satisfaction from enemies before formal declarations of war”). The root of the Latin word is thought to be Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁- (“to do, place, put”), also the source of the verb Latin faciō (“to do; to build, construct; to appoint”). The nominalized form of this verb, Proto-Indo-European *dʰéh₁tis (“act of putting, placement”), would have developed into an Italic noun *fētis (unattested, but conjectured to mean something like "statute, treaty" or "prescription, law", developing to mean "body of priests"), which was combined with the adjective-forming suffix -ālis to yield Latin fētiālis. The unadapted Latin forms fetialis (singular) and fetiales (plural) are also used in English, sometimes with italicization, sometimes without.
NYT Puzzle Appearances
No published puzzle dates on file for this word yet. It is part of the official NYT Spelling Bee word list for 2022, 2026.