This week's theme
Well-traveled words

This week's words
dragoman
golgotha
mandarin
jubilee
Mata Hari

---

A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(GOL-guh-thuh)

MEANING:

noun:
1. A place or occasion of great suffering.
2. A burial place.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Golgotha, the hill near Jerusalem believed to be the site of Jesus's crucifixion. From Latin, from Greek golgotha, from Aramaic gulgulta, from Hebrew gulgolet (skull). The hill was perhaps named from the resemblance of its shape to a skull. Earliest documented use: 1597.

USAGE:

"A soldier from Mississippi called Spotsylvania 'one vast Golgotha in immensity of the number of the dead'."
Michael Ruane; 'Were Turned into Fiends and Brutes'; The Washington Post; Apr 27, 2014.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: