A.Word.A.Day --gallivant

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Mar 3, 2014

This week's theme
Verbs

This week's words
gallivant
vituperate
scrutate
distend
manducate

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

If verbs ever needed a spokesperson, they'd find the perfect candidate in the naturalist and author Terry Tempest Williams, who once said:

This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, argue, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek. To seek: to embrace the questions, be wary of answers.

Williams said it well. Verbs make sentences come alive. Verbs are the words, literally, from Latin verbum (word). This week we'll look at five specimens from this tribe of words.

gallivant or galavant

PRONUNCIATION:

(GAL-uh-vant)

MEANING:

verb intr.: To roam about in search of pleasure.

ETYMOLOGY:

Perhaps alteration of gallant, from Old French galer (to rejoice). Earliest documented use: 1823.

USAGE:

"Lady Gaga, Kyle Richards, and Carlton Gebbia gallivant around the streets of Amsterdam in thigh-high boots and trench coats just past midnight."
Bradley Stern; Jewels n' Wives; Time (New York); Feb 12, 2014.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Man needs to go outside himself in order to find repose and reveal himself. -José Martí, revolutionary and poet (1853-1895)

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