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Jul 23, 2024
This week’s theme
Look Ma, no affix!

This week’s words
gruntled
ept
ruth
reck
descript

ept
Illustration: Anu Garg + AI

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

ept

PRONUNCIATION:
(ept)

MEANING:
adjective:
1. Competent; skillful.
2. Effective; appropriate.

ETYMOLOGY:
Back-formation from inept, from Latin ineptus (unsuitable or absurd), from in- (not) + aptus (apt). Earliest documented use: 1938.

USAGE:
“An ept goon would have done the job right.”
Gina Robinson; Spy Games; Kensington; 2009.

“I am much obliged..to you for your warm, courteous, and ept treatment of a rather weak, skinny subject.”
E.B. White; Letters of E.B. White; Harper & Row; 1976.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph. -Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia (23 Jul 1892-1975)

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