cineast: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for June 22 is:

cineast \SIN-ee-ast\ noun
: a devotee of motion pictures; also : moviemaker

Example sentence:
Ralph and Tory met -- and fell in love -- at a film festival, and within a year the two cineasts were engaged to be married.

Did you know?
"Cineast" is a French borrowing that made its American premiere in the mid-1920s. The French spliced together "cine" and "-aste" to create "cineaste," a word for a filmmaker or movie director. "Cine" in French is just another word for "cinema," and "-aste" is a suffix that appears in words like "gymnaste" and "enthousiaste." "Cineaste" underwent several changes once it was established in English. Some writers anglicized its spelling, shortening "-aste" to "-ast" (although "cineaste" and "cineaste" are also still used). Others began to use "cineast" to mean "film buff," and that's the sense that is most common today.

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