This week’s theme
Words that violate the i-before-e rule

This week’s words
reveille
facies
mythopoeic
obeisance
conscientious


This week’s comments
AWADmail 873

Next week’s theme
People who became verbs

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(kon-shee-EN-shus)

MEANING:

adjective:
1. Meticulous or painstaking.
2. Following one’s conscience; scrupulous.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin con- (intensive prefix) + from scire (to know). Ultimately from the Indo-European root skei- (to cut or split), which also gave us schism, ski, shin, science, conscience, nice, scienter, nescient, exscind, and sciolism, adscititious. Earliest documented use: 1603.

USAGE:

“Conscientious individuals avoid trouble and achieve success through planning and persistence.”
Ross Gittins; Give Your Personality a Check-Up; Sydney Morning Herald (Australia); Jan 9, 2019.

“[Bush Sr. & Muhammad Ali] certainly made for an odd pair of bedfellows, the patrician blue blood who enlisted in the US Navy on his 18th birthday and the most conscientious of all the objectors to the Vietnam War.”
Dave Hannigan; Ali’s Hostage Negotiating Led to Unlikely Bush Friendship; Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland); Dec 6, 2018.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: