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Oct 27, 2015
This week’s theme
Miscellaneous words

This week’s words
anodyne
salacious
probity
rectitude
emollient

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

salacious

PRONUNCIATION:
(suh-LAY-shuhs)

MEANING:
adjective: 1. Obscene. 2. Lustful.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin salax (lustful, fond of leaping), from salire (to leap). Ultimately from the Indo-European root sel- (to jump), which also gave us salient, sally, sauté, assail, assault, exult, insult, result, somersault, resile, desultory, and saltant. Earliest documented use: 1661.

USAGE:
“Billed as a salacious ‘kick and tell’, early indications [of the book Lucky Jack] suggest an anodyne lack of revelation.”
Lucky Jack; Sunday Times (London, UK); Jul 24, 2005.

See more usage examples of salacious in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad. -Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US president (27 Oct 1858-1919)

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