This week's theme
Words that have many unrelated meanings

This week's words
mensal
sconce
mortify
cloaca
confabulate

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(klo-AY-kuh)

MEANING:

noun:
1. An outhouse.
2. A sewer.
3. The common duct into which intestinal, urinary, and genital tracts open in birds, reptiles, most fishes, and some mammals.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin cloaca (sewer, canal), from cluere (to cleanse). Earliest documented use: 1656.

USAGE:

"David Walsh has found that cloaca happens. Having spent $180 million establishing Museum of Old and New Art, the most famous exhibit being Cloaca, a complicated poo-producing machine, Mr Walsh is now involved in a legal stoush* with the Australian Tax Office."
MONA founder in Tax Office sights; The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia); Jun 7, 2012.
* fight

"Anne had balked at hanging her mistress's most beautiful clothes in the cloaca ... because of the smell."
Posie Graeme-Evans; The Anne Trilogy; Atria; 2002.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: