A.Word.A.Day --camorra

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Today's Word

camorra

PRONUNCIATION:

(kuh-MOR-uh)

MEANING:

noun: A secret group united for unscrupulous purposes.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Camorra, a secret organization in Naples, Italy, engaged in criminal activities. From Italian, possibly from Spanish camorra (fight). Earliest documented use: 1865.

USAGE:

“Flaubert had poured a stream of corrosive irony on this idea of patriotism. Is it loyalty to a set of political jobholders, a king and his court, a president and his bureaucracy, a parliament, a congress, a Duce or Führer, a camorra of commissars?”
Albert Jay Nock; Memoirs of a Superfluous Man; Harper & Brothers; 1943.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

When the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre -- the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

ANOTHER THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Once or twice in every generation a line is crossed so egregiously that where you stood on the issue will forever define you. -Kara Vallow, artist (b. 1967)

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