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Oct 30, 2020
This week’s themeMisc. words This week’s words coquelicot capacious double-talk vaporous luteous
Male Raorchestes luteolus vocalizing (also known as yellow bush frog)
Photo: Seshadri.K.S / Wikimedia This week’s comments AWADmail 957 Next week’s theme Borrowed words A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Gargluteous
PRONUNCIATION:
MEANING:
adjective: 1. Of an orange-yellow or greenish-yellow color. 2. Muddy. ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin luteus (yellow), from lutum (yellowweed, mud). Earliest
documented use: 1656.
USAGE:
“Of the five-thousand-odd species of stinkbug in the world, the brown
marmorated kind is the most destructive, the most annoying, and possibly
the ugliest. It is roughly the size of a dime, although thicker, but its
head is unusually small, even for an insect, which gives it an appropriately
thuggish look. Its six legs prop its shield-shaped body up in the air, as
if they were pallbearers at the funeral of a Knight Templar. Its antennae
are striped with bands of dark and light, while its eyes, should you get
close enough to gaze into them, are the vivid red of an alarm clock at
night. The ‘marmorated’ in its name means ‘marbled’, but ‘mottled’ is
closer to the truth. Entomologists, who have a color palette as elaborate
as Benjamin Moore’s, describe the underside of its body as ‘distinctly
pale luteous’.” Kathryn Schulz; Home Invasion; The New Yorker; Mar 12, 2018. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof (White House).
-John Adams, 2nd US President, and the first one to live in the White House
(30 Oct 1735-1826)
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