A.Word.A.Day --expergefaction

A.Word.A.Day

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Mar 5, 2018

This week’s theme
Five words that use all letters of the alphabet

This week’s words
expergefaction
vaquero
azymous
whipjack
vendible

Photo: Carol Leigh

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

Chances are you’ve heard about that brown fox known for his agility in jumping over an indolent canine. Yes, I’m talking about “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”

It’s a sentence that makes use of all the letters of the alphabet. A piece of text like this is called a pangram, from Greek pan- (all) + -gram (something written).

While such a made-up sentence is nice when learning typing or showcasing a new typeface, I was curious what pangrams appear organically in Romeo and Juliet or the US Constitution or Harry Potter.

So I created the Pangram Finder. You can feed it any text (even a whole book) and it’ll find you all the pangrams in the text.

What pangrams have you discovered? Share them below or email us at words@wordsmith.org.

Also, this week we’ll feature five words that together make use of all 26 letters of the English alphabet.

expergefaction

PRONUNCIATION:

(ek-spuhr-juh-FAK-shuhn)

MEANING:

noun:
1. Awakening or arousing.
2. The state of being awakened or aroused.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin expergefacere (to awaken), from expergisci (to become awake) + facere (to make or do). Earliest documented use: 1639.

USAGE:

“It was as if the humans’ sudden reappearance was an expergefaction; their great destructive potential inspired the actions that the prophets had not deemed essential only a few short weeks before.”
Ivan Henley; The Black Sword of Xorimahr; Writers Club Press; 2002.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Scratch a pessimist and you find often a defender of privilege. -William Beveridge, economist and reformer (5 Mar 1879-1963)

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