dauntless: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for July 18 is:

dauntless \DAWNT-lus\ adjective
: fearless, undaunted

Example sentence:
Following a defeat by the French, dauntless George Washington wrote, "I luckily escap'd with't a wound tho' I had four Bullets through my Coat and two Horses shot under me." (Letter to Robert Dinwiddie, July 18, 1755)

Did you know?
The history of the world is peopled with dauntless men and women who refused to be subdued or "tamed" by fear. The word "dauntless" can be traced back to Latin "domare," meaning "to tame" or "to subdue." When our verb "daunt" (a "domare" descendant borrowed by way of Anglo-French) was first used in the 14th century, it shared these meanings. The now-obsolete "tame" sense referred to the taming or breaking of wild animals (particularly horses). An "undaunted" horse was an unbroken horse. Not until the late 16th century did we use "undaunted" with the meaning "undiscouraged and courageously resolute" to describe people. By then, such lionhearted souls could also be described as "undauntable," and finally, in _Henry VI_, Part 3, Shakespeare gave us "dauntless."

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