A.Word.A.Day --anodyne

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Oct 26, 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

The novelist Evelyn Waugh once said, “One forgets words as one forgets names. One’s vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.” Here at Wordsmith.org we do our best to fertilize, water, and refresh your vocabulary.

If you can find a way to link words it makes it even easier to remember them. That’s what we are going to do this week -- feature five miscellaneous words connected by their usage examples.

anodyne

PRONUNCIATION:

(AN-uh-dyn)

MEANING:

adjective:
1. Relieving pain; soothing.
2. Bland or insipid: not likely to provoke or offend.

noun:
1. Something that soothes or comforts.
2. A medicine that relieves pain.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin anodynos, from Greek anodynos, from a- (not) + odyne (pain). Ultimately from the Indo-European root ed- (to eat, to bite), which also gave us edible, comestible, obese, etch, fret, postprandial, esurient, and edacity. Earliest documented use: 1543.

USAGE:

“The interview, while engaging, was anodyne and strangely emollient, entirely without any edge.”
TV: Shelving the Misery Memoirs; Sunday Business Post (Cork, Ireland); May 18, 2014.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

I have a trunk containing continents. -Beryl Markham, adventurer (26 Oct 1902-1986)

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