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Friday, December 30, 2005

dyspepsia: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for December 30 is:

dyspepsia \dis-PEP-shuh\ noun
1 : indigestion
*2 : ill humor : disgruntlement

Example sentence:
"As his prestige grew," wrote historian Daniel Boorstin about Sir Isaac Newton, "so did his dyspepsia, his unwillingness to give credit to others or share credit for his great discoveries."

Did you know?
When people get indigestion, they are often affected by nausea, heartburn, and gas -- things that can cause the world's greatest gastronome to curse the world's most delectable dishes. So, it is no wonder that "dyspepsia," a word for indigestion, has also come to mean "ill humor" or "disgruntlement." The word itself is ultimately derived from the Greek prefix "dys-" ("faulty" or "impaired") and verb "pessein" ("to cook" or "to digest"). To please the wordmonger's appetite, we would like to end with this tasty morsel: "Dyspepsia" has an opposite, "eupepsia" ? a rarely used word meaning "good digestion" that can be found in _Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged_.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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