Word of the Day

GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Paradox [PAIR-uh-dahks] 📖 What It Means: Paradox refers to something (such as a situation) that is made up of two opposite things and that seems impossible but is actually true or possible. It can also refer to someone who does two seemingly opposite things or who has qualities that are opposite; to a statement that seems to say two opposite things but that nonetheless may be true; or to the use of such statements in writing or speech. 📰 Example: It is a paradox that computers need time-consuming updates so often, since they are meant to save people time. 💬 In Context: “In some ways, I think the idea of a ‘serious lady’ might even be a paradox, if to be serious means to understand the world according to one’s own precepts, experiences, and observations, and to behave in a way that reflects this. A lady, on the other hand, follows rules that others have devised. How, then, can a ‘serious lady’ be anything other than a very peculiar and odd creature—which the women in this book certainly are?” — Sheila Heti, from the introduction to Two Serious Ladies: A Novel by Jane Bowles, 2025 (orig. 1943) 💡 Did You Know? The ancient Greeks were well aware that a paradox—the saying “less is more,” for example—can take us outside our usual way of thinking. They combined the prefix para-, “beyond” or “outside of,” with the verb dokein, “to think,” forming paradoxos, an adjective meaning “contrary to expectation.” Latin speakers used that word as the basis for a noun paradoxum, which English speakers borrowed during the 1500s as paradox. 🔗

Word of the Day: Paradox

The ancient Greeks were well aware that a paradox—the saying “less is more,” for example—can take us outside our usual way of thinking. The...

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GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Collude [kuh-LOOD] 📖 What It Means: To collude is to work with others secretly especially in order to do something illegal or dishonest. Collude is used as a synonym of conspire and plot. 📰 Example: She is accused of colluding with known criminals. 💬 In Context: "Two lawsuits filed in April accuse hundreds of insurers of colluding to drop policyholders and force them onto the plan, which offers limited policies that typically cost more." — Laurence Darmiento, The Los Angeles Times, 25 June 2025 💡 Did You Know? Colluding—working secretly with others to do something deceitful or illegal—is not a game, but you'd never know it if you took your cues on the meaning of collude solely from its etymology. Collude comes from the Latin verb colludere, which in turn combines the prefix com-, meaning "together," and the verb ludere, "to play." Ludere, in turn, comes from ludus, meaning "game, play, or sport." (Ludus is also the source of the adjective ludicrous and the noun interlude). Collude has a related noun—collusion—which carries the specific meaning "secret agreement or cooperation." Despite their playful history, collude and collusion have always suggested illicit trickery rather than good-natured fun. 🔗

Word of the Day: Paradox

The ancient Greeks were well aware that a paradox—the saying “less is more,” for example—can take us outside our usual way of thinking. The...

#WordOfTheDay #Nostr #Dictionary #Learning

GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Innocuous [ih-NAH-kyuh-wus] 📖 What It Means: Innocuous describes either something that is not likely to bother or offend anyone (as in “an innocuous comment”), or something that causes no injury, or is otherwise considered harmless (as in “an innocuous prank”). 📰 Example: The reporter asked what seemed like an innocuous question, but it prompted the candidate to storm off, abruptly ending the press conference. 💬 In Context: “Strong solar storms can be dangerous for astronauts in space, and can cause problems for GPS systems and satellites. ... But solar storms can also have more innocuous consequences on Earth, such as supercharged displays of the northern lights.” — Denise Chow, NBC News (online), May 15, 2025 💡 Did You Know? Innocuous is rooted in a lack of harm: it comes from the Latin adjective innocuus, which was formed by combining the negative prefix in- with a form of the verb nocēre, meaning “to harm” or “to hurt.” It first appeared in print in the early 1600s with the meaning “harmless; causing no injury,” as in “an innocuous gas,” and soon developed a second, metaphorical sense used to describe something that does not offend or cause hurt feelings, as in “an innocuous comment.” Innocent followed the same trajectory centuries before; its negative in- prefix joined with Latin nocent-, nocens, meaning “wicked,” which also comes from nocēre. This is not to say that nocēre has only contributed words that semantically negate the harm inherent in the root: nocēre is also the source of noxious and nuisance. 🔗

Word of the Day: Paradox

The ancient Greeks were well aware that a paradox—the saying “less is more,” for example—can take us outside our usual way of thinking. The...

#WordOfTheDay #Nostr #Dictionary #Learning

GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Gumbo [GUM-boh] 📖 What It Means: Gumbo refers to a soup thickened with okra pods or filé and containing meat or seafoods and usually vegetables. The word is also used figuratively to refer to a mixture or blend of something. 📰 Example: The reputation of the family’s gumbo guaranteed them an invitation to any and all neighborhood potlucks. 💬 In Context: “Gram and Aunt Rachel got a big bucket of gumbo on the way home ... and we ate it out of the container with plastic spoons in front of the clubhouse TV, watching episode after episode of Jeopardy!, none of us wagering any answers. Gull sat in my lap and picked out the okra.” — Tennessee Hill, Girls with Long Shadows: A Novel, 2025 💡 Did You Know? Gumbo refers to an aromatic soup of the Creole cuisine of Louisiana, combining African, Indigenous North American, and European elements. It takes its name from the American French word gombo, which in turn is of Bantu origin and related to the Umbundu word ochinggômbo, meaning “okra.” Okra usually plays a starring role in gumbo as a thickener (unless the soup is thickened by filé, powdered young sassafras leaves) alongside the holy trinity of celery, onion, and bell pepper, and any number of additional ingredients, from seafood (shrimp, crab, or oysters) to meat (chicken, sausage, duck, or game) to leafy greens. The variety of ingredients and ways to prepare the dish eventually led to the figurative sense of gumbo referring to a variety, mixture, or mélange of things, as in “a gumbo of ideas.” 🔗

Word of the Day: Paradox

The ancient Greeks were well aware that a paradox—the saying “less is more,” for example—can take us outside our usual way of thinking. The...

#WordOfTheDay #Nostr #Dictionary #Learning

GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Eminently [EM-uh-nunt-lee] 📖 What It Means: Eminently is used as a synonym of very and means "to a high degree." 📰 Example: Our team came up with an eminently sensible plan to reduce waste. 💬 In Context: "This was jazz of the highest order—challenging, yet accessible, eminently entertaining and arrestingly beautiful. Goosebumps were felt." — T'Cha Dunlevy, The Gazette (Montreal, Canada), 8 July 2025 💡 Did You Know? When British physician Tobias Venner wrote in 1620 of houses "somewhat eminently situated," he meant that the houses were located at an elevated site—they were literally in a high place. That use has since slipped into obsolescence, as has the word's use to mean "conspicuously"—a sense that reflects its Latin root, ēminēre, which means "to stick out" or "protrude." All three meanings date to the 17th century, but today's figurative sense of "notably" or "very" is the only one now regularly encountered. 🔗

Word of the Day: Paradox

The ancient Greeks were well aware that a paradox—the saying “less is more,” for example—can take us outside our usual way of thinking. The...

#WordOfTheDay #Nostr #Dictionary #Learning

GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Loll [LAHL] 📖 What It Means: Loll most often means “to droop or hang loosely.” It can also mean “to act or move in a relaxed or lazy manner.” 📰 Example: We’re counting down the days until the weather will be warm enough again to laze and loll by the pool. 💬 In Context: “Just across the highway at Año Nuevo State Park, elephant seals loll lazily on the beach.” — Scott Clark, quoted in Saveur, 3 Apr. 2025 💡 Did You Know? Despite appearances, loll isn’t an exaggerated version of the abbreviation LOL. It isn’t even related to laughing. Instead, it is about hanging out, both literally and figuratively. Like another relaxing verb, lull (“to cause to rest or sleep”), it probably originated as an imitation of the soft sounds people make when resting or trying to soothe someone else to sleep. In addition to meaning “to hang loosely,” as in “a dog with its tongue lolling out,” loll shares meaning with a number of l verbs that are all about taking it easy, including loaf, lounge, and laze. 🔗

Word of the Day: Paradox

The ancient Greeks were well aware that a paradox—the saying “less is more,” for example—can take us outside our usual way of thinking. The...

#WordOfTheDay #Nostr #Dictionary #Learning

GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Marginalia [mahr-juh-NAY-lee-uh] 📖 What It Means: Marginalia is a plural noun that refers to notes or other marks written in the margins of a text, and also to nonessential matters or items. 📰 Example: I loved flipping through my literature textbooks to find the marginalia left behind by former students. 💬 In Context: “Marginalia have a long history: Leonardo da Vinci famously scribbled thoughts about gravity years before Galileo Galilei published his magnum opus on the subject; the discovery was waiting under our noses in the margins of Leonardo’s Codex Arundel.” — Brianne Kane, Scientific American, 19 Sept. 2025 💡 Did You Know? In the introduction to his essay titled “Marginalia,” Edgar Allan Poe wrote: “In getting my books, I have always been solicitous of an ample margin; this not so much through any love of the thing in itself, however agreeable, as for the facility it affords me of penciling suggested thoughts, agreements and differences of opinion, or brief critical comments in general.” At the time the essay was first published in 1844, marginalia was only a few decades old despite describing something—notes in the margin of a text—that had existed for centuries. An older word, apostille (or apostil), refers to a single annotation made in a margin, but that word is rarely used today. Even if you are not, like Poe, simply ravenous for scribbling in your own books, you likely know marginalia as a telltale sign that someone has read a particular volume before you. 🔗

Word of the Day: Paradox

The ancient Greeks were well aware that a paradox—the saying “less is more,” for example—can take us outside our usual way of thinking. The...

#WordOfTheDay #Nostr #Dictionary #Learning

GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Titanic [tye-TAN-ik] 📖 What It Means: Something described as titanic is very great in size, force, or power. 📰 Example: The batter saved the game in the bottom of the ninth inning by hitting a titanic home run right out of the park. 💬 In Context: “Absurdly, though, if you were standing on a Rodinian beach [on the ancient supercontinent of Rodinia] you might not have even noticed the seas rising at all. This is because, as the land bounced back from underneath the weight of the now-vanished ice sheets, and the gravitational pull of these titanic ice sheets on the oceans disappeared, the seas might have appeared to some Rodinian beachgoers to instead retreat from the coast, and even drop by over three hundred feet—despite the unthinkable rise in sea level globally.” — Peter Brannan, The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything:... 💡 Did You Know? Before becoming the name of the most famous ship in history, titanic described that which resembled or was related to the Titans, the family of giant gods and goddesses in Greek mythology who were believed to have once ruled the earth. They were subsequently overpowered and replaced by the younger Olympian gods under the leadership of Zeus. The size and power of the Titans is memorialized in the adjective titanic and in the noun titanium, a chemical element of exceptional strength that is used especially in the production of steel. 🔗

Word of the Day: Paradox

The ancient Greeks were well aware that a paradox—the saying “less is more,” for example—can take us outside our usual way of thinking. The...

#WordOfTheDay #Nostr #Dictionary #Learning

GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Senescence [sih-NESS-unss] 📖 What It Means: Senescence is a formal and technical word that refers to the state of being old or the process of becoming old. 📰 Example: Our grandparents, now in their senescence, are enjoying spending more time with family and going on new adventures together. 💬 In Context: “Pilates provides improvements in core strength, flexibility and balance, even when done just once a week. It can help with stress relief, as well as anxiety and depression. Among those 60 years of age and older, Pilates has even been shown to slow the process of senescence.” — Leah Asmelash, CNN, 7 Sept. 2025 💡 Did You Know? Senescence can be traced back to Latin senex, meaning “old.” Can you guess which other English words come from senex? Senile might (correctly) come to mind, as well as senior. But another one might surprise you: senate. This word for a legislative assembly dates back to ancient Rome, where the Senatus was originally a council of elders composed of the heads of patrician families. There's also the much rarer senectitude, which, like senescence, refers to the state of being old (specifically, to the final stage of the normal life span). 🔗

Word of the Day: Paradox

The ancient Greeks were well aware that a paradox—the saying “less is more,” for example—can take us outside our usual way of thinking. The...

#WordOfTheDay #Nostr #Dictionary #Learning

GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Febrile [FEB-ryle] 📖 What It Means: Febrile is a medical term meaning "marked or caused by fever; feverish." It is sometimes used figuratively, as in "a febrile political climate." 📰 Example: I'm finally back on my feet after recovering from a febrile illness. 💬 In Context: "Peppered with exclamation marks, breathless and febrile, this is an utterly mesmeric account of how one man's crimes can affect an entire community." — Laura Wilson, The Guardian (London), 20 June 2025 💡 Did You Know? The English language has had the word fever for as long as the language has existed (that is, about a thousand years); the related adjective feverish has been around since the 14th century. But that didn’t stop the 17th-century medical reformer Noah Biggs from admonishing physicians to care for their "febrile patients" properly. Biggs apparently thought his medical writing required a word that clearly nodded to a Latin heritage, and called upon the Latin adjective febrilis, from febris, meaning "fever." It’s a tradition that English has long kept: look to Latin for words that sound technical or elevated. But fever too comes from febris. It first appeared (albeit with a different spelling) in an Old English translation of a book about the medicinal qualities of various plants. By Biggs’s time it had shed all obvious hallmarks of its Latin ancestry. Febrile, meanwhile, continues to be used in medicine in a variety of ways, including in references to such things as "febrile seizures" and "the febrile phase" of an illness. The word has also developed figurative applications matching those of feverish, as in "a febrile atmosphere." 🔗

Word of the Day: Paradox

The ancient Greeks were well aware that a paradox—the saying “less is more,” for example—can take us outside our usual way of thinking. The...

#WordOfTheDay #Nostr #Dictionary #Learning