A.Word.A.Day --lucubrate

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Mar 31, 2009

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A random walk through the dictionary

This week's words
diaphanous
lucubrate
acarpous
coetaneous
pellucid

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A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

lucubrate

PRONUNCIATION:

(LOO-kyoo-brayt)

MEANING:

verb intr.: To work (such as study, write, discourse) laboriously or learnedly.

ETYMOLOGY:

Here's a word that literally encapsulates the idiom "to burn the midnight oil". It's derived from Latin lucubrare (to work by lamplight), from lucere (to shine). Ultimately from the Indo-European root leuk- (light) that's resulted in other words such as lunar, lunatic, light, lightning, lucid, illuminate, illustrate, translucent, lux, and lynx.

USAGE:

"So MPs have voted to lucubrate less. To lucubrate fewer? To sit for fewer midnight hours. To work less antisocial hours. To have less/fewer late nights."
Philip Howard; Less is More Prevalent; The Times (London, UK); Nov 1, 2002.

See more usage examples of lucubrate in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

They are happy men whose natures sort with their vocations. -Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626)

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