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Apr 23, 2014
This week's theme
Words to describe people

This week's words
tractable
bombastic
impecunious
petulant
incorrigible

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

impecunious

PRONUNCIATION:
(im-pi-KYOO-nee-uhs)

MEANING:
adjective: Having little or no money.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin im- (not) + pecunia (money), from pecus (cattle). Ultimately from the Indo-European root peku- (cattle, wealth), which also gave us fee, fief, fellow, peculiar, impecunious, and pecuniary. Earliest documented use: 1596.

USAGE:
"The children have no mother, and their father is impecunious, so they have embarked on a series of adventurous money-making schemes."
James Wood; The New Curiosity Shop; The New Yorker; Oct 21, 2013.

"Discounts for the clever or impecunious greatly reduce the sticker price at many universities."
Is College Worth It?; The Economist (London, UK); Apr 5, 2014.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Action is eloquence. -William Shakespeare, playwright and poet (1564-1616)

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