This week's theme
There's a word for it

This week's words
snowbroth
anatopism
quaternary
elflock
allochthonous

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(uh-NAT-uh-piz-ehm)

MEANING:

noun: The error of placing something out of its proper place; also something placed erroneously.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Greek ana- (against) + topos (place). Anatopism is to place what anachronism is to time. Earliest documented use: 1812.

USAGE:

"The Bard is often accused of anatopism -- that is, getting his geography wrong. Why else would he, in The Taming of the Shrew, put a sailmaker in Bergamo, a landlocked city in Italy, ask critics?"
D. Murali; Shakespeare, 'Literary Equivalent of an Electron'; The Hindu (Chennai, India); Dec 2, 2007.

"Homer may have taken some slight and temporary liberty with the facts, but it does not amount to the major anatopism that some commentators have found in it and should not be taken as evidence that Homer did not have firsthand knowledge of the area."
John Victor Luce; Celebrating Homer's Landscapes; Yale University Press; 1998.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: