This week’s theme
Autological words

This week’s words
verbify
proparoxytone
abstruse
grandiloquent
sesquipedalianism

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(ab-STROOS)

MEANING:

adjective: Hard to understand; obscure.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin abstrudere (to hide), from ab- (away) + trudere (to push). Ultimately from the Indo-European root treud- (to squeeze), which also gave us extrude, intrude, threat, and thrust. Earliest documented use: 1549.

USAGE:

“‘You Americans are abstruse,’ I can’t forget his saying one night while we watched TV. My philosophy professor had assigned a French essay on wrestling, but I’m not good at French so was viewing the Worldwide Wrestling Championship Tournament instead.
‘What does abstruse mean,’ I humbly inquired.
‘To be abstruse means to be recondite....’
‘So what does recondite mean,’ I tried again.
‘Oh, it’s something hard to understand.’
‘Don’t patronize me. Just tell me what it means.’”
Jane Ransom; Bye-Bye; NYU Press; 1997.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: