This week’s theme
Eponyms

This week’s words
lorelei
Paul Pry
boycott
chauvinism
lovelace


This week's comments
AWADmail 687

Next week's theme
Verbs

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(LUV-lays)

MEANING:

noun: A seducer; a licentious man.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Robert Lovelace, a dissolute character in Samuel Richardson’s novel Clarissa (1748). Earliest documented use: 1751. Other eponyms with similar senses are Casanova, Don Juan, and Romeo.

USAGE:

“He could not be made to understand that the modern drama of divorce is sometimes cast without a Lovelace. ‘You might as well tell me there was nobody but Adam in the garden when Eve picked the apple. You say your wife was discontented? No woman ever knows she’s discontented till some man tells her so.’”
Edith Wharton; The Custom of the Country; 1913.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: