Word of the Day: Omnium

Omnium - Sounds rather singular and meaningful, doesn't it?

Well it's not. It's just a new-ish olympic category - a multiple event for track cycling.

Wikipedia says the word is Latin for "all around the thing" - although with what little I know of Latin, I'd guess it's more like "all thing".

Don't know why this word seems to have been snaffled for the Olympics - and track cycling, at that. It's a very generic construct. Maybe there was no Latin word for Cycling - yet Latin is constantly being updated for the modern world.

I am not too fond of this modern construct/usurpation.  Tomorrow's word is another recent coining that gets my goat.

Where did I encounter this word? Sunday, listening to radio, got pulled up by a word I'd never heard before.  The casual disbursement of the word itself was more noteworthy than the context.