A.Word.A.Day --micrify

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Aug 5, 2022

This week’s theme
Verbs

This week’s words
obtrude
mundify
discerp
elute
micrify

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, 1989

Poster: Disney / Wikimedia

This week’s comments
AWADmail 1049

Next week’s theme
Words coined after animals

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

micrify

PRONUNCIATION:

(MYK-ruh-fy)

MEANING:

verb tr.: To make small or insignificant.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Greek micro- (small) + -ficare (to make). Earliest documented use: 1836.

USAGE:

“With no way to micrify anything ... I had to let everything in one-to-one, raw, and unreduced.”
Harry Dodge; My Meteorite; Penguin; 2020.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

How would you describe the difference between modern war and modern industry -- between, say, bombing and strip mining, or between chemical warfare and chemical manufacturing? The difference seems to be only that in war the victimization of humans is directly intentional and in industry it is "accepted" as a "trade-off". -Wendell Berry, farmer and author (b. 5 Aug 1934)

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