This week's theme
Words that have many unrelated meanings

This week's words
consonance
levee
prow
rote
loblolly

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(KON-suh-nuhns)

MEANING:

noun:
1. Agreement or accord.
2. A combination of sounds pleasing to the ear.
3. The repetition of consonant sounds, especially at the ends of words, such as st in the phrase first and last.

ETYMOLOGY:

Via French, from Latin con- (with) + sonare (to sound), from sonus (sound). Ultimately from the Indo-European root swen- (to sound), which also gave us sound, sonic, sonnet, sonata, and unison. Earliest documented use: 1430.

USAGE:

"Chin said the stance was in full consonance with the policy of the party."
Jacob Achoi; SUPP Reconciliation 'Bright'; The Borneo Post (Malaysia); Mar 23, 2014.

"The show felt like the sweetest kind of chamber music, with perfectly satisfying intervals, cadences, rhythms; but to achieve that consonance, every part of the ensemble had to be just so."
Hugh Laurie; Saying Goodbye to 'House'; Entertainment Weekly (New York); May 18, 2012.

"Despite the many decades that their lives overlapped and the consonance of their names, like the setup of a joke, Bruch and Bruckner have little in common."
Zachary Woolfe; Come Together; The New York Times; Jan 11, 2013.

See more usage examples of consonance in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: