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Wednesday, November 08, 2006

peroration: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for November 8 is:

peroration \pair-uh-RAY-shun\ noun
*1 : the concluding part of a discourse and especially an oration
2 : a highly rhetorical speech

Example sentence:
The President concluded, in an eloquent and ringing peroration, that it was necessary for the nation to stand together against hardships.

Did you know?
As you may have already guessed, "peroration" is a relative of "oration." Both words ultimately derive from the Latin "orare," meaning "to speak" or "to plead." The direct ancestor of "peroration" is the Latin verb "perorare," meaning "to declaim at length" or "to wind up an oration." "Perorare," in turn, comes from the combination of "per-" ("through") and "orare." The English language also has the verb "perorate," which means "to deliver a long or grandiloquent speech" or "to offer a concluding part of a speech."

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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