A.Word.A.Day --androgenic

A.Word.A.Day

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Sep 30, 2024

This week’s theme
Words differing by a letter

This week’s words
androgenic
ideophone
idiophone
thanatopsis
thanatosis

Illustration: Anu Garg + AI

Previous week’s theme
Words differing by a letter

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

You’ve likely heard of the butterfly effect -- how a tiny change, like a butterfly flapping its wings in a distant prairie, could stir up a storm on the other side of the world.

Just as a small change in nature can cause a ripple, so can the smallest tweak in language create entirely new meanings.

Welcome back to week two of our wordplay adventure! This week, we continue our journey by making a tiny shift -- just one letter -- to each word and see how it transforms. We begin with a change to last Fri’s androgynic.

What words like this can you think of? Share below or email us at words@wordsmith.org.

For even more linguistic mischief, check out the weeks where each word had two definitions, differing by just a single letter: here and here.

androgenic

PRONUNCIATION:

(an-druh-JEN-ik)

MEANING:

adjective:
1. Relating to the development of male characteristics.
2. Having origin in the male sex.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Greek andro- (man) + -genic (producing). Earliest documented use: 1919.

USAGE:

“[Mossy Kilcher] has finished a memoir about her young life on the homestead, meant partly as her corrective to the androgenic versions of Alaskan life promoted by reality television.”
Grayson Haver Currin; Folk Songs for Alaska Get a Second Life; The New York Times; Jul 15, 2020.

“Danazol was commonly used to treat endometriosis in the 1980s, but many cis-gender women were turned off the medication because of the androgenic effects of a deepening voice and coarse facial hair.”
Christel Yardley; “Every Boy Should Know About It”; Dominion Post (Wellington, New Zealand); Dec 8, 2020.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Racism tends to attract attention when it's flagrant and filled with invective. But like all bigotry, the most potent component of racism is frame-flipping -- positioning the bigot as the actual victim. So the gay do not simply want to marry; they want to convert our children into sin. The Jews do not merely want to be left in peace; they actually are plotting world take-over. And the blacks are not actually victims of American power, but beneficiaries of the war against hard-working whites. This is a respectable, more sensible bigotry, one that does not seek to name-call, preferring instead to change the subject and straw man. -Ta-Nehisi Coates, writer and journalist (b. 30 Sep 1975)

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