A.Word.A.Day --jezebel

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Jezebel

PRONUNCIATION:

(JEZ-uh-bel)

MEANING:

noun: A shameless, wicked, or immoral woman.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Jezebel, the wife of King Ahab in the Old Testament, who was defenestrated and killed for not worshiping the right god. Earliest documented use: 1558.

USAGE:

"Olive's not just clever but, in her unshowy way, more saintly than the people who call her a Jezebel."
Sukhdev Sandhu; Top of the Class; The Daily Telegraph (London, UK); Oct 22, 2010.

See more usage examples of jezebel in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stone-cutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it would split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before together. -Jacob A. Riis, journalist and social reformer (1849-1914)

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