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May 19, 2016
This week’s themeMiscellaneous words This week’s words factious repudiate blandishment ignominious fractious Send a gift that keeps on giving, all year long: A gift subscription of A.Word.A.Day or give the gift of books A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Gargignominious
PRONUNCIATION:
MEANING:
adjective: Deserving or causing disgrace or shame.
ETYMOLOGY:
Via French, from Latin ignominia, from ig- (not) + nomen (name). Ultimately
from the Indo-European root no-men- (name) which also gave us name, anonymous,
noun, synonym, eponym, renown, nominate, misnomer, and moniker.
Earliest documented use: 1530.
USAGE:
“Bureaucratic, hand-typed, without puffery or blandishment, they may be the
most ignominious documents in the Jews’ 4,000-year history.
They are four sheets of paper dated Sep 15, 1935, signed by Adolf Hitler,
that legally excluded Jews from German life and set the groundwork for
exterminating them from Europe.” Daniel B. Wood; Some Dark Words of History Come to Light; The Christian Science Monitor (Boston, Massachusetts); Jul 1, 1999. See more usage examples of ignominious in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Humankind is made up of two sexes, women and men. Is it possible for
humankind to grow by the improvement of only one part while the other part
is ignored? -Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder and the first president of
Turkey (19 May 1881-1938)
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