This week’s theme
Verbs

This week’s words
insufflate
spanghew
peregrinate
quetch
nidify


This week’s comments
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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(NID-uh-fy)

MEANING:

verb intr.: To build a nest.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin nidificare (to build a nest), from nidus (nest) + facere (to make or do). Earliest documented use: 1656.

USAGE:

“At the beginning of August, when we arrived in Weimar, almost everyone was away -- ‘at the Baths,’ of course -- except the tradespeople. As birds nidify in the spring, so Germans wash themselves in the summer.”
George Eliot; The Spanish Gypsy; Worthington; 1890.

“The bird’s ‘most favourite place to nidify in’, says an old book, ‘is in the impressed footmarks of cattle, made in damp soil, which offers, when hardened by the sun, a sufficient protection for the young.’”
Michael Viney; Larksong an Abiding Sign of Life; Irish Times (Dublin); Jun 17, 2006.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: