tyro: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 31 is:

tyro \TYE-roh\ noun
: a beginner in learning : novice

Example sentence:
A reviewer described the new photography manual as "a clear explanation of the basics, ideal for tyros but too elementary for seasoned shutterbugs."

Did you know?
The word "tyro" is hardly a newcomer to Western language. It comes from the Latin "tiro," which means "young soldier," "new recruit," or more generally, "novice." The word was sometimes spelled "tyro" as early as Medieval Latin, and can be spelled "tyro" or "tiro" in English (though "tyro" is the more common American variant). Use of "tyro" in English has never been restricted to the original "young soldier" meaning of the Latin term. Writers in the 17th and 18th centuries wrote of tyros in various fields and occupations. Herman Melville used "tyro" to refer to men new to whaling and life at sea. More recently, _The New York Times Book Review_ and _Rolling Stone_ used the noun attributively (that is, directly before another noun), referring to a "tyro sleuth" and a "tyro director," respectively.

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protean: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 30 is:

protean \PROH-tee-un\ adjective
1 : of or resembling Proteus in having a varied nature or ability to assume different forms
*2 : displaying great diversity or variety : versatile

Example sentence:
Bradley has made the most of the space in his tiny apartment by selecting furniture pieces that are protean, such as storage cubes that double as extra seats.

Did you know?
Proteus was the original master of disguise. According to Greek mythology, the grizzled old shepherd of Poseidon's sea creatures possessed the gift of prophecy but didn't like to share his knowledge. Proteus would escape those who wanted to question him by changing his shape. The only way to get a straight answer from him was to sneak up behind him during his midday nap and hold onto him (while he frantically changed from shape to shape) until he eventually revealed what he knew. The adjective "protean" describes anyone or anything that is as mutable and adaptable as the mythological shepherd.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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berate: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 29 is:

berate \bih-RAYT\ verb
: to scold or condemn vehemently and at length

Example sentence:
I quit my job after my boss berated me for addressing a letter incorrectly.

Did you know?
"Berate" and one sense of the verb "rate" can both mean "to scold angrily or violently." This sense of "rate" was first recorded in the 14th century, roughly a century before the now more familiar sense meaning "to estimate the value of." We know that "berate" was probably formed by combining "be" and the older sense of "rate," but the origins of "rate" itself are somewhat more obscure. We can trace the word back to the Middle English form "raten," but beyond that things get a little murky. It's possible that "rate," and by extension "berate," derives from the same ancient word that led to the Swedish "rata" (meaning "to find blame, despise") and earlier the Old Norse "hrata" ("to fall, stagger"), but this is uncertain.

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stagflation: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 28 is:

stagflation \stag-FLAY-shun\ noun
: persistent inflation combined with stagnant consumer demand and relatively high unemployment

Example sentence:
In the '70s, when the economy slid into stagflation, many college graduates had difficulty landing the high-paying jobs they had expected.

Did you know?
"Stagflation" is a portmanteau, that is, a word that blends two others (in this case, "stagnation" and "inflation"). The first documented use of the word appeared in 1965 in the writing of British politician Iain Macleod, who wrote, "We now have the worst of both worlds -- not just inflation on the one side or stagnation on the other, but both of them together. We have a sort of 'stagflation' situation." Macleod is often credited with coining the term, and his linguistic invention was quickly embraced by economists in the United States, who used it to refer to the period of economic sluggishness and high inflation that affected the country in the 1970s.

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objet trouve: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 27 is:

objet trouve \AWB-zhay-troo-VAY\ noun
: a natural or discarded object found by chance and held to have aesthetic value

Example sentence:
The museum's latest show, which features objets trouves, is a dramatic change from last year's exhibition of medieval religious art.

Did you know?
"Objet trouve" comes from French, where it literally means "found object." The term entered English during the early 20th century, a time when many artists challenged traditional ideas about the nature of true art. Surrealists and other artists, for instance, held that any object could be a work of art if a person recognized its aesthetic merit. "Objet trouve" can refer to naturally formed objects whose beauty is the result of natural forces as well as to man-made artifacts (such as bathtubs, wrecked cars, or scrap metal) that were not originally created as art but are displayed as such.

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auriferous: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 26 is:

auriferous \aw-RIF-uh-russ\ adjective
: containing gold

Example sentence:
The discovery of an auriferous region in California sparked the famous gold rush of 1849.

Did you know?
Students in chemistry class learn that the chemical symbol for gold is "Au." That symbol is based on "aurum," the Latin word for the element. In the 17th century, English speakers coined "auriferous" by appending the "-ous" ending to the Latin adjective "aurifer," an offspring of "aurum" that means "containing gold" or "producing gold." (The "-fer" is from "ferre," a Latin verb meaning "to produce" or "to bear.") Not surprisingly, "auriferous" is a term that shows up in geological contexts. Some other descendants of "aurum" include "aureate" ("of a golden color" or "marked by grandiloquent style"), "auric" ("of, relating to, or derived from gold"), and the noun "or" ("the heraldic color gold or yellow").

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parabolic: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 25 is:

parabolic \pair-uh-BAH-lik\ adjective
1 : expressed by or being a parable : allegorical
*2 : of, having the form of, or relating to a parabola : of, having the form of, or relating to a curve formed by the intersection of a cone with a plane parallel to a straight line in its surface

Example sentence:
Astronomers have determined that the comet follows a parabolic orbit.

Did you know?
The two distinct meanings of "parabolic" trace back to the development of Late Latin and New Latin. Late Latin is the Latin language used by writers in the third to sixth centuries. In that language, the word for "parable" was "parabola" -- hence, the "parable" sense of "parabolic." New Latin refers to the Latin used since the end of the medieval period, especially in regard to scientific description and classification. In New Latin, "parabola" names the same geometrical curve as it does in English. Both meanings of "parabola" were drawn from the Greek word for "comparison": "parabole."

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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crambo: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 24 is:

crambo \KRAM-boh\ noun
: a game in which one player gives a word or line of verse to be matched in rhyme by other players

Example sentence:
According to his early letters, James Boswell, friend and biographer of English lexicographer Samuel Johnson, was a keen crambo player.

Did you know?
We've called the game "crambo" since at least 1660, but it was originally dubbed "crambe." The now-obsolete word "crambe" literally meant "cabbage," but it was rarely used for the leafy plant. Instead, it was used figuratively (in reference to a Latin phrase meaning "cabbage repeated or served up again") for things that were overused or repeated. The game, which was popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, began with one player picking a word. A second player then tried to guess it by asking questions. For example: "I know a word that rhymes with 'bird.'" "Is it ridiculous?" "No, it is not absurd." "Is it a part of speech?" "No, it is not a word." And so on, until the word was guessed.

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assail: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 23 is:

assail \uh-SAIL\ verb
: to attack violently with blows or words

Example sentence:
When Harriet came home and found her son riding his tricycle in the road, she tore into the house and assailed the babysitter for her irresponsibility.

Did you know?
"Assail" comes from an Anglo-French verb, "assaillir," which itself traces back to the Latin verb "assilire" ("to leap upon"). "Assilire" combines the prefix "ad-" ("to, toward") with the Latin verb "salire," meaning "to leap." When "assail" was first used in the 13th century, it meant "to make a violent physical attack upon." By the 1500s, English speakers were using the term to mean "to attack with words or arguments."

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quiescent: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 22 is:

quiescent \kwy-ESS-unt\ adjective
*1 : marked by inactivity or repose : tranquilly at rest
2 : causing no trouble or symptoms

Example sentence:
The storm was over, and the quiescent waters betrayed no sign of yesterday's turbulence.

Did you know?
"Quiescent" won't cause you any pain, and neither will its synonyms "latent," "dormant," and "potential," at least not immediately. All four words mean "not now showing signs of activity or existence." "Latent" usually applies to something that has not yet come forth but may emerge and develop, as in "a latent desire for success." "Dormant" implies a state of inactivity similar to sleep, as in "their passions lay dormant." "Potential" applies to what may or may not come to be. "A potential disaster" is a typical example. "Quiescent," which traces to the Latin "quiescere" (meaning "to become quiet" or "to rest"), often suggests a temporary cessation of activity, as in "a quiescent disease" or "a summer resort quiescent in wintertime."

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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plenitude: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 21 is:

plenitude \PLEN-uh-tood\ noun
1 : the quality or state of being full : completeness
*2 : a great sufficiency : abundance

Example sentence:
The resort offers a plenitude of entertainment options for families traveling with children.

Did you know?
"Plenitude" was first recorded in English during the 15th century and ultimately comes to us from "plenus," the Latin word for "full." "Plenus" has also given us "plenty," which in turn influenced a variation on "plenitude": "plentitude." Some usage commentators have objected to "plentitude," but it has been in use since the early 1600s and has appeared in the works of such writers as Henry James and Sir Walter Scott. Both words are used in the same sorts of contexts, but "plentitude" is not used as frequently as "plenitude."

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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chiliad: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 20 is:

chiliad \KILL-ee-ad\ noun
1 : a group of 1000
*2 : millennium

Example sentence:
Many people feared that widespread technical glitches would create chaos at the start of the new chiliad.

Did you know?
What's the difference between a chiliad and a millennium? Not much: both words refer to a period of 1000 years. While "millennium" is more widely used, "chiliad" is actually older. It first appeared in 1598 and was originally used to mean "a group of 1000," as in "a chiliad of errors." "Millennium" didn't make its way into written English until the 1630s. Not surprisingly, both words trace back to roots that mean "thousand." "Millenium" comes from the Latin "mille," and "chiliad" is a descendent of the Greek "chilioi."

*Indicates the sense illustrated by the example sentence.

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virescent: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 19 is:

virescent \vuh-RESS-unt\ adjective
*1 : beginning to be green : greenish
2 : developing or displaying the condition of becoming green due to the development of chloroplasts in plant organs (as petals) normally white or colored

Example sentence:
Buds formed on the bare trees, infusing the stark branches with a slight virescent tint.

Did you know?
"Virescent" first appeared in English in 1826. It derives from the present participle of "virescere," a Latin verb meaning "to become green" and a form of another verb, "virere," meaning "to be green." "Virere" also gave us another adjective meaning green, "verdant," only the route to that adjective takes a stop at the Old French "verdoier" ("to be green"). "Virescent" has seen occasional general use, as when Thomas Hardy wrote, in his 1881 novel _A Laodicean_, of "[t]he summer ... tipping every twig with a virescent yellow." But it is nowadays found most frequently in scientific contexts, especially those pertaining to botany.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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benison: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 18 is:

benison \BEN-uh-sun\ noun
: blessing, benediction

Example sentence:
The travelers stopped at the tiny country church and sought the benison of the priest before continuing their arduous journey.

Did you know?
"Benison" and its synonym "benediction" share more than a common meaning; the two words come from the same root, the Latin "benedicere," meaning "to bless." ("Benedicere" comes from the Latin "bene dicere" -- "to speak well of" -- a combination of the Latin "bene," meaning "well," and "dicere," to say.) Of the two words, "benediction" is more common today, but "benison" has a longer history in English. Records show that "benison" has been used in our language since the 14th century. "Benediction" didn't appear in print until nearly a century later.

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phishing: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 17 is:

phishing \FISH-ing\ noun
: a scam by which an e-mail user is duped into revealing personal or confidential information which the scammer can use illicitly

Example sentence:
The widespread use of electronic banking and financial transactions has prompted the FTC to crack down on cyber crimes, such as phishing.

Did you know?
"Phishing" is one of the many new computer-related terms that have found their way into the general lexicon over the past decade or so. Its "ph" spelling is influenced by an earlier word for an illicit act: "phreaking." Phreaking involves fraudulently using an electronic device to avoid paying for telephone calls, and its name is suspected of being a shortening of "phone freak." A common phishing scam involves sending e-mails that appear to come from banks requesting recipients to verify their accounts by typing personal details, such as credit card information, into a Web site that has been disguised to look like the real thing. Such scams can be thought of as "fishing" for naive recipients.

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rankle: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 16 is:

rankle \RANK-ul\ verb
: to cause irritation or bitterness in

Example sentence:
Rae Ann?s snooty attitude and rude behavior rankled me, but I smiled to hide my irritation.

Did you know?
The history of today's word is something of a sore subject. When "rankle" was first used in English, it meant "to fester," and that meaning is linked to the word's Old French ancestor, a noun that was spelled "raoncle" or "draoncle" and meant "festering sore." Etymologists think the Old French noun derived from "dracunculus," a diminutive form of "draco," which is the Latin word for "serpent" and the source of the English word "dragon." The transition from serpents to sores apparently occurred because people thought certain ulcers or tumors looked like small serpents.

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peripatetic: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 15 is:

peripatetic \pair-uh-puh-TET-ik\ adjective
1 capitalized : Aristotelian
2 a : of, relating to, or given to walking *b : moving or traveling from place to place : itinerant

Example sentence:
Rodney was a peripatetic journalist for several years until he bought a house and started writing for the local paper.

Did you know?
Are you someone who likes to think on your feet? If so, you've got something in common with the followers of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. Not only a thinker and teacher, Aristotle was also a walker, and his students were required to walk along beside him as he lectured while pacing to and fro. Thus it was that the Greek word "peripatetikos" (from "peripatein," meaning "to walk up and down") came to be associated with Aristotle and his followers. By the way, the covered walk in the Lyceum where Aristotle taught was known as the "peripatos" (which can either refer to the act of walking or a place for walking).

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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refluent: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 14 is:

refluent \REH-floo-unt\ adjective
: flowing back

Example sentence:
There are some lakes in Louisiana that appear to be formed by the refluent waters of the Mississippi River.

Did you know?
"Refluent" was first documented in English during the 15th century, and it can be traced back to the Latin verb "refluere," meaning "to flow back." "Refluere," in turn, was formed from the prefix "re-" and the verb "fluere" ("to flow"). Other "fluere" descendants in English include "confluent" ("flowing together"), "fluent" and "fluid" (both of which share the earliest sense of "flowing easily"), "circumfluent" ("flowing around"), and even "affluent" (which first meant "flowing abundantly"). "Refluent" even has an antonym derived from "fluere" -- "effluent," meaning "flowing out."

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phalanx: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 13 is:

phalanx \FAY-lanks\ noun
1 : a body of heavily armed infantry in ancient Greece formed in close deep ranks and files; broadly : a body of troops in close array
2 plural phalanges : one of the digital bones of the hand or foot of a vertebrate
3 *a : a massed arrangement of persons, animals, or things b: an organized body of persons

Example sentence:
The police commissioner had to maneuver through a phalanx of reporters before he could make his way into the building.

Did you know?
The original sense of "phalanx" refers to a military formation that was used in ancient warfare and consisted of a tight block of soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder, several rows deep, often with shields joined. The word "phalanx" comes from the Greeks, though they were not the only ones who used this formation. The Greek term literally means "log" and was used for both this line of battle and for a bone in a finger or toe. The word and its senses passed into Latin and then were adopted into English in the 16th century. These days, a "phalanx" can be any arranged mass, whether of persons, animals, or things, or a body of people organized in a particular effort.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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erudite: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 12 is:

erudite \AIR-uh-dyte\ adjective
: possessing or displaying extensive knowledge acquired chiefly from books : learned

Example sentence:
The university hosted an informative lecture given by an erudite scholar of Cold War history.

Did you know?
"Erudite" derives via Middle English "erudite" from Latin "eruditus," the past participle of the verb "erudire," meaning "to instruct." A closer look at that verb shows that it is formed by combining the prefix "e-," meaning "missing" or "absent," with the adjective "rudis," which means "rude" or "ignorant" and is also the source of our word "rude." We typically use the word "rude" to mean "discourteous" or "uncouth" but it can also mean "lacking refinement" or "uncivilized"; someone who is erudite, therefore, has been transformed from a roughened or uninformed state to a polished and knowledgeable one through a devotion to learning.

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inspissate: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 11 is:

inspissate \in-SPISS-ayt\ verb
: to make thick or thicker

Example sentence:
"Letting citizens sue polluters ... would only inspissate the logjam of litigation." (_The New York Times_, August 5, 1985)

Did you know?
"Inspissate" is ultimately derived from Latin "spissus" ("slow, dense") and is related to Greek "spidnos" ("compact") and Lithuanian "spisti" ("to form a swarm"). When it appeared an English in the 17th century, "inspissate" suggested a literal thickening. Francis Bacon, for example, wrote in 1626 that "Sugar doth inspissate the Spirits of the Wine, and maketh them not so easie to resolue into Vapour." Eventually "inspissate" was also used metaphorically. Clive Bell once wrote of "parties of school children and factory girls inspissating the gloom of the museum atmosphere." There is also an adjective "inspissate," meaning "thickened in consistency" or "made thick, heavy, or intense," but that word is used even less frequently than the somewhat rare verb.

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maitre d': M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 10 is:

maitre d' or maitre d' \may-truh-DEE\ noun
: maitre d'hotel, headwaiter

Example sentence:
The maitre d' ushered the couple to a private table at the back of the restaurant.

Did you know?
"Maitre d'" is short for "maitre d'hotel," which comes from French and literally means "master of the house." "Maitre d'hotel" was first used in English in the 16th century for a head butler or steward of a household, before it was adapted to refer to the head of a dining-room staff around the middle of the 19th century. (For the record, the plural of "maitre d'hotel" is "maitres d'hotel," whereas the plural of "maitre d'" is "maitre d's.") We began dropping the "hotel" of "maitre d'hotel" about 50 years ago. At first, the abbreviated form was considered slang, but today "maitre d'" is widely used in American English and is accepted as a standard American use.

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transpontine: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 9 is:

transpontine \trans-PAHN-tyne\ adjective
*1 : situated on the farther side of a bridge
2 British : situated on the south side of the Thames

Example sentence:
Bella recommended a transpontine restaurant for our evening rendezvous, so we took a cab across the East River from our hotel in Manhattan and met her in Queens.

Did you know?
Usually the prefix "trans-," meaning "across," allows for a reciprocal perspective. Whether you're in Europe or America, for example, transoceanic countries are countries across the ocean from where you are. But that's not the way it originally worked with "transpontine." The "pont-" in "transpontine" is from the Latin "pons," meaning "bridge," and the bridge in this case was, at first, any bridge that crossed the River Thames in the city of London. "Across the bridge" meant on one side of the river only -- the south side. That's where the theaters that featured popular melodramas were located, and Victorian Londoners first used "transpontine" to distinguish them from their more respectable "cispontine" ("situated on the nearer side of a bridge") counterparts north of the Thames.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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aught: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 8 is:

aught \AWT\ pronoun
1 : anything
*2 : all, everything

Example sentence:
"Xury said it was a lion, and it might be so for aught I know." (Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe)

Did you know?
"If you know aught which does behove my knowledge / Thereof to be inform'd, imprison't not / In ignorant concealment," Polixenes begs Camillo in Shakespeare's _The Winter's Tale_, employing the "anything" sense of "aught." Shakespeare didn't coin the pronoun "aught," which has been a part of the English language since before the 12th century, but he did put it to frequent use. Writers today may be less likely to use "aught" than were their literary predecessors, but the pronoun does continue to turn up occasionally. "Aught" can also be a noun meaning "zero," and for a while the phrase "the aughts" was bandied about as a proposed label for the decade that began in the year 2000.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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scaramouch: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 7 is:

scaramouch \skair-uh-MOOSH\ noun
1 capitalized : a stock character in the Italian commedia dell'arte that burlesques the Spanish don and is characterized by boastfulness and cowardliness
2 a : a cowardly buffoon *b : rascal, scamp

Example sentence:
My great uncle was an untrustworthy old scaramouch.

Did you know?
In the commedia dell'arte, Scaramouch was a stock character who was constantly being cudgeled by Harlequin, which may explain why his name is based on an Italian word meaning "skirmish," or "a minor fight." The character was made popular in England during the late 1600s by the clever acting of Tiberio Fiurelli. During that time, the name "Scaramouch" also gained notoriety as a derogatory word for "a cowardly buffoon" or "rascal." Today not many people use the word (which can also be spelled "scaramouche"), but you will encounter it while listening to Queen's ubiquitous rock song "Bohemian Rhapsody," in the lyric "I see a little silhouetto of a man / Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the fandango?"

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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turbid: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 6 is:

turbid \TER-bid\ adjective
1 *a : thick or opaque with or as if with roiled sediment b : heavy with smoke or mist
2 a : deficient in clarity or purity : foul, muddy b : characterized by or producing obscurity (as of mind or emotions)

Example sentence:
With alarm and dismay, Evelyn saw that the turbid floodwaters had started seeping into her kitchen.

Did you know?
"Turbid" and "turgid" (which means "swollen or distended" or "overblown, pompous, or bombastic") are frequently mistaken for one another, and it?s no wonder. Not only do the two words differ by only a letter, they are often used in contexts where either word could fit. For example, a flooded stream can be simultaneously cloudy and swollen, and badly written prose might be both unclear and grandiloquent. Nevertheless, the distinction between these two words, however fine, is an important one for conveying exact shades of meaning, so it's a good idea to keep them straight.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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peruse: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 5 is:

peruse \puh-ROOZ\ verb
1 a : to examine or consider with attention and in detail : study b : to look over or through in a casual or cursory manner
*2 : read; especially : to read over in an attentive or leisurely manner

Example sentence:
Dmitri perused the menu while we waited for a table.

Did you know?
"Peruse" has long been a literary word, used by such famous authors as Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Thomas Hardy, and it tends to have a literary flavor even in our time. "Peruse" can suggest paying close attention to something, but it can also simply mean "to read." The "read" sense, which is not especially new and was in fact included in Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary, has drawn some criticism over the years for being too broad. Some commentators have recommended that "peruse" be reserved for reading with great care and attention to detail. But the fact remains that "peruse" is often used in situations where a simple "read" definition could be easily substituted. It may suggest either an attentive read or a quick scan.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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nomenclator: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 4 is:

nomenclator \NOH-mun-klay-ter\ noun
1 : a book containing collections or lists of words
*2 : one who gives names to or invents names for things

Example sentence:
Within days of her promotion, Jenna found herself in the role of nomenclator, trying to name the company?s newest product.

Did you know?
"Nomenclator" means "name caller" in Latin (from "nomen," meaning "name," and the verb "calare," meaning "to call"). In ancient Rome, the nomenclator's job was to call out or whisper the names of people as they approached a candidate during a political rally. Whether the idea was to make the politician look good, as though he himself remembered everyone personally, or simply to apprise him of more names than he was ever expected to remember himself is open to question. What's quite certain is that in modern times the job title names one who creates new names for things. "Nomenclator" is applied especially to those who help create a "nomenclature" -- a system of terms for a particular discipline.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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Walter Mitty: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 3 is:

Walter Mitty \wawl-ter-MITT-ee\ noun
: a commonplace unadventurous person who seeks escape from reality through daydreaming

Example sentence:
"Many readers seem to be Walter Mittys, content to experience danger vicariously." (James Kelly, _Time Magazine_, August 19, 1985)

Did you know?
The original "Walter Mitty" was created by humorist James Thurber, who wrote the famous story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." In Walter's real life, he is a reticent, henpecked proofreader befuddled by everyday life. But in his fantasies, Walter imagines himself as various daring and heroic characters. Thurber's popular story, which was first published in _The New Yorker_ in 1939, was later made into a movie. Walter Mitty has since become the eponym for dreamers who imagine themselves in dramatic or heroic situations.

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deliquesce: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 2 is:

deliquesce \del-ih-KWESS\ verb
*1 : to dissolve or melt away
2 : to become soft or liquid with age or maturity -- used of some fungal structures (as the gills of a mushroom)

Example sentence:
Someone forgot to put the butter back in the refrigerator, instead leaving it to deliquesce on the kitchen counter.

Did you know?
"Deliquesce" derives from the prefix "de-" ("completely, away") and a form of the Latin verb "liquere," meaning "to be fluid." Things that deliquesce, it could be said, turn to mush in more ways than one. In scientific contexts, a substance that deliquesces absorbs moisture from the atmosphere until it dissolves in the absorbed water and forms a solution. When plants and fungi deliquesce, they lose rigidity as they age. When "deliquesce" is used in non-scientific contexts, it is often in a figurative or humorous way to suggest the act of "melting away" under exhaustion, heat, or idleness, as in "teenagers deliquescing in 90-degree temperatures."

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.

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august: M-W's Word of the Day

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The Word of the Day for August 1 is:

august \aw-GUST\ adjective
: marked by majestic dignity or grandeur

Example sentence:
Mr. Lee's bearing was always august and stately, and he drew respectful glances wherever he went.

Did you know?
"August" comes from the Latin word "augustus," meaning "consecrated" or "venerable," which in turn is related to the Latin "augur," meaning "consecrated by augury" or "auspicious." In 8 B.C. the Roman Senate honored Augustus Caesar, the first Roman emperor, by changing the name of their month "Sextilis" to "Augustus." Middle English speakers inherited the name of the month of August, but it wasn't until the mid-1600s that "august" came to be used generically in English, more or less as "augustus" was in Latin, to refer to someone with imperial qualities.

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