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Feb 22, 2006
This week's theme
Red-herring words

This week's words
sextet
potatory
gyrovague
discommode
obsequy

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

gyrovague

(JYE-ro-vayg) noun Pronunciation Sound Clip RealAudio

noun: A monk who travels from one place to another.

From French, from Late Latin gyrovagus gyro- (circle) + vagus (wandering).

"Other forms of religious life on Mount Athos fall outside these two major categories and include anchorites, hermits who live alone in secluded cells or in groups of two or three in remote houses with their own chapels, and gyrovagues -- itinerant, mendicant monks."
Plutarchos Theocharides; The Holy Mountain; UNESCO Courier; Jan 1998.

X-Bonus

Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and wonderfully diversified human race. -Jacques Barzun, professor and writer (1907- )

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