A.Word.A.Day --durance

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Jun 25, 2012

This week's theme
Words with variant spellings

This week's words
durance
suasion
versal
monish
complice

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A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

I wasn't born with the sports gene, but I love swimming. Last week, when I went to the pool I saw that a letter had fallen off the sign on the wall. Instead of "NO DIVING", now it said "O DIVING". As I swam laps, the thought came to me that the sign still made sense. It simply said there's to be zero diving.

This week's words are selected in a similar vein. It appears a letter or two has fallen off the front of these words, but that doesn't make much of a difference. These words still float well. They still mean the same, more or less.

durance

PRONUNCIATION:

(DOO-ruhns, DYOO-)

MEANING:

noun:
1. Endurance.
2. Imprisonment or confinement, especially a long one. (Often used in the phrase 'durance vile')

ETYMOLOGY:

From French durance (duration), from durer (to last), from Latin durare (to last), from durus (hard). Earliest documented use: 1513.

USAGE:

"The durance of a granite ledge."
Ralph Waldo Emerson; 1847.

"And from that durance he is still waiting for release."
John Banville; Athena; Knopf; 1995.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring. -Martin Luther King, Jr., civil-rights leader (1929-1968)

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