A.Word.A.Day --approbation

A.Word.A.Day

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Jan 4, 2021

This week’s theme
Usage examples that are food for thought

This week’s words
approbation
promontory
exigency
construe
disinterested

Previous week’s theme
Words to describe people

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

When we feature a word, we include one or more examples from a published work. The point is to show that it’s a word in actual use. This week we are showing those words in use, not in transient writing, but in lines that we quote again and again, sometimes over hundreds of years.

Consider these a bonus THOUGHTS FOR TODAY. We’ll feature examples from the works of Richard Steele, John Donne, Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare, and Norman Angell.

approbation

PRONUNCIATION:

(ap-roh-BAY-shuhn)

MEANING:

noun: Approval, praise, commendation, or official sanction.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin approbation, from ad- (toward) + probatus, from probare (to test the goodness of). Earliest documented use: 1393.

USAGE:

“Whenever you commend, add your reasons for doing so; it is this which distinguishes the approbation of a man of sense from the flattery of sycophants and admiration of fools.”
Richard Steele; The Art of Conversation; The Spectator; 1711.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

People who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral but in favor of the status quo. -Max Eastman, journalist and poet (4 Jan 1883-1969)

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