A.Word.A.Day --agley

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Today's Word

agley

PRONUNCIATION:

(uh-GLEE/GLAY/GLY)

MEANING:

adverb, adjective:
1. Awry.
2. Wrong.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Scots agley, from a- (toward) + gley/glee (to squint). Earliest documented use: 1785.

NOTES:

The earliest citation for the word is in Robert Burns’s poem “To a Mouse”
“The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley” [Go oft awry]

USAGE:

“Upstairs, things weren’t precisely going wrong, but they were going just a bit agley.”
Donald E. Westlake; Dancing Aztecs; M. Evans; 2011.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

The theory of democratic government is not that the will of the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of average intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course by bitter experience. -W.E.B. Du Bois, educator, civil rights activist, and writer (23 Feb 1868-1963)

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