A.Word.A.Day --connate

A.Word.A.Day

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Jun 29, 2015

This week’s theme
What’s a letter here or there between friends?

This week’s words
connate
sorb
ramble
fardel
maunder

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A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

In high school I knew a student who was especially clever. When he faced a true/false question in a test, and he wasn’t sure of the answer, he would write the letter T and then add a faint line in the middle of the letter, as if it were an F.

So if you are a teacher looking at the test paper you may wonder if the student has written a T or an F and, perhaps, give him the benefit of the doubt. I don’t know if this trick did him any good, but if I were his teacher, I’d give him half a point for ingenuity.

Well, with this week’s words, if you are not sure of the definition, you don’t need to employ such a trick. Change a letter in the definition and it still works. Each of this week’s words has two definitions that differ by a single letter.

connate

PRONUNCIATION:

(KON-ayt, ko-NAYT)

MEANING:

adjective:
1. Congenial.
2. Congenital.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin connasci (to be born with), from com- (with) nasci (to be born). Earliest documented use: 1641.

USAGE:

“In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets and villages.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson; Nature; 1836.

“Zyuganov had a connate sense of how to convince subjects.”
Jason Matthews; Red Sparrow; Simon & Schuster; 2013.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral. -Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author and aviator (29 Jun 1900-1944)

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