A.Word.A.Day --lentitude

A.Word.A.Day

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Jun 10, 2024

This week’s theme
Misc words

This week’s words
lentitude
virid
coterminous
salvific
hyaline

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Previous week’s theme
Words to describe people

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

We can get a random number by throwing a pair of dice. We can get a random answer to a yes/no question by tossing a coin. But beyond these trivial things, randomness is serious business. When a lottery winner is picked you want to make sure that the number picked is truly random. As the mathematician Robert Coveyou once said, “Random number generation is too important to be left to chance.”

Well, this week’s words are randomly chosen. Not truly at random, because out of half a million words in the English language that method may give us words that aren’t very interesting. Also, choosing words truly at random would mean that sometimes the same word may appear twice (or more often). But these words are random in the sense that there isn’t a unifying theme connecting them.

And if you need more words beyond what are featured this week, visit the web page on our website that shows a random word picked from words previously featured in A.Word.A.Day. Again, these words are selected using a pseudo random number generator, so don’t use them for divination or for your life’s big decisions (Should I marry him?).

lentitude

PRONUNCIATION:

(LEN-tuh-tood/tyood)

MEANING:

noun: Slowness or sluggishness.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin lentus (slow). Earliest documented use: 1623.

USAGE:

“This lentitude I incline to attribute to his nurse’s liberal use of laudanum as a pacifier.”
Jaspistos; Kid Brother; The Spectator (London, UK); Jun 26, 2004.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door. -Saul Bellow, writer, Nobel laureate (10 Jun 1915-2005)

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