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Jul 29, 2016
This week’s theme
Words to describe people

This week’s words
equanimous
mumpish
compunctious
vituperative
ingenious

This week’s comments
AWADmail 735

Next week’s theme
Verbs
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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

ingenious

PRONUNCIATION:
(in-JEEN-yuhs)

MEANING:
adjective: Clever, creative, inventive.

ETYMOLOGY:
Via French from Latin ingeniosus (clever, talented, full of intellect), from ingenium (inborn talent), from gignere (to beget). Earliest documented use: 1483. Don’t confuse ingenious with ingenuous even though both words are from the same root.

USAGE:
“The mothers and their daughters prove to be brave, resourceful, and remarkably ingenious at befuddling the goons.”
Marilyn Stasio; Predator and Prey; New York Times Book Review; Apr 20, 2014.

See more usage examples of ingenious in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
I have noticed that when chickens quit quarreling over their food they often find that there is enough for all of them I wonder if it might not be the same with the human race. -Don Marquis, humorist and poet (29 Jul 1878-1937)

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