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Verbs This week's words dissimulate cadge pretermit wend brachiate Discuss this week's words on our bulletin board: Wordsmith Talk 
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with Anu Garg"They've a temper, some of them -- particularly verbs, they're the proudest -- adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs -- however, I can manage the whole lot of them!" boasts Humpty-Dumpty in Lewis Carroll's 1872 classic, "Through the Looking Glass". If verbs are in fact as conceited as Humpty-Dumpty claims them to be, perhaps they can be forgiven for their hoity-toity ways -- after all, they are the ones that bring a sentence to life. How many of this week's five verbs can you manage? dissimulate
PRONUNCIATION:
(di-SIM-yuh-layt)
MEANING:
verb tr., intr.:
To disguise one's intentions, thoughts, motives, etc. by pretense.
ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin dis- (apart, away) + simulare (to simulate), from similis (like).
Ultimately from the Indo-European root sem- (one) that is also the source
of simultaneous, assemble, simple, Sanskrit sandhi (union), Russian samovar
(a metal urn), and Greek hamadryad (a wood nymph).
USAGE:
"Charles Clarke added: 'We need to talk straight to people, engaging the
concerns and questions that they have, rather than appearing to evade
and dissimulate.'"Andrew Grice; Clarke: Brown Succession Is Not A Done Deal; The Independent (London, UK); Mar 29, 2007. See more usage examples of dissimulate in Vocabulary.com's dictionary. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
O, what a world of vile ill-favoured faults, / Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year! -William Shakespeare, playwright and poet (1564-1616)
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