A.Word.A.Day --know-it-all

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Mar 5, 2020

This week’s theme
Tosspot words

This week’s words
canker-blossom
cure-all
wantwit
know-it-all
makepeace

“Sorry, you are out of refills for your Knowitall prescription. Looks like you’re gonna have to shut up.”

Image: someecards

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

know-it-all

PRONUNCIATION:

(NO-uht-ahl)

MEANING:

noun: One who acts as if they know everything, dismissing others’ ideas or advice.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Old English cnawan (to recognize, identify) + hit (it) + eall/all (all). Earliest documented use: 1873

USAGE:

“He shakes his head smiling. ‘Still an insufferable know-it-all.’
She gives him a taut, bitter grin. ‘And you’re still so smugly, blithely ignorant.’”
Robert Jackson Bennett; City of Stairs; Crown; 2014.

See more usage examples of know-it-all in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Sometimes they seem like living shapes, / The people of the sky, / Guests in white raiment coming down / From heaven, which is close by. -Lucy Larcom, teacher and author (5 Mar 1824-1893)

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