This week’s theme
Wheels

This week’s words
trochilic
rotiform
zodiac
exorbitant
encyclical


This week’s comments
AWADmail 1083

Next week’s theme
There’s a word for it

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(in/en-SIK-li-kuhl)

MEANING:

noun: An official letter.
adjective: For wide circulation.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Greek kyklos (circle, cycle). Earliest documented use: 1616.

NOTES:

A more common word for an encyclical is circular. In the Roman Catholic Church, a letter from the pope to bishops, usually dealing with the matters of doctrine, is called an encyclical.

USAGE:

“[Robert Armstrong] also possessed a dry humour. One encyclical he sent to senior Whitehall officials deploring leaks was itself leaked. When the journalist, now filmmaker, Paul Greengrass, raised this during a Granada TV World in Action interview, Armstrong replied: ‘I was very sad that it took so long as six weeks to leak. I hoped it would leak much sooner than that.’”
Richard Norton-Taylor; Lord Armstrong of Ilminster; The Guardian (London, UK); Apr 5, 2020.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: