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Jul 4, 2008
This week's theme
Words from medicine

This week's words
costive
roborant
catholicon
atrabilious
linctus

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Words made using combining forms
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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

linctus

PRONUNCIATION:
(LINGK-tuhs)

MEANING:
noun: A syrupy liquid medicine, especially for treating coughs.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin lingere (to lick). Ultimately from the Indo-European root leigh- (lick) that is also the source of lichen (apparently from the way it licks its way around a surface), and lecher, but not lingerie (which is from the root lino: flax).

USAGE:
"The audience emitted a few throaty cackles, as if they had collectively drunk too much cough linctus."
Simon Hoggart; Labour Conference; The Guardian (London, UK); Sep 24, 2007.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
It was our own moral failure and not any accident of chance, that while preserving the appearance of the Republic we lost its reality. -Marcus Tullius Cicero, statesman, orator, writer (106-43 BCE)

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