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Apr 23, 2014
This week's themeWords to describe people This week's words tractable bombastic impecunious petulant incorrigible Add your 2 cents to our discussion on language and words. Or, if you wish, use paise, pence, yen, pesos, piasters, etc. Log on at our discussion forum Wordsmith Talk A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Gargimpecunious
PRONUNCIATION:
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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