A.Word.A.Day --olid

A.Word.A.Day

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Jan 29, 2018

This week’s theme
Words that turn into another when a letter is added or removed at the top

This week’s words
olid
latitudinarian
fuliginous
emesis
tautologous

Hotel Olid

Photo: Iglesia en Valladolid

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

Put the right hat on someone and sometimes you can make them look very different. The same goes with words. Add an initial letter and you can turn them into something else.

A cop turns into a poet (scop), a logger turns into an unpaid writer (blogger), and an usher into a dog racer (musher).

What hats can you put on (or take off) this week’s words to turn them into different beasts?

olid

PRONUNCIATION:

(O-lid)

MEANING:

adjective: Foul-smelling.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin olere (to smell), which also gave us the opposite of today’s word: redolent. Earliest documented use: 1680.

USAGE:

“It was dark and musty, the carpet giving off an olid smell of mildew.”
Chris R. Jamison; The Chesler Legacy; Writer’s Showcase; 2000.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

It is my belief that the writer, the free-lance author, should be and must be a critic of the society in which he lives. It is easy enough, and always profitable, to rail away at national enemies beyond the sea, at foreign powers beyond our borders who question the prevailing order. But the moral duty of the free writer is to begin his work at home; to be a critic of his own community, his own country, his own culture. If the writer is unwilling to fill this part, then the writer should abandon pretense and find another line of work: become a shoe repairman, a brain surgeon, a janitor, a cowboy, a nuclear physicist, a bus driver. -Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (29 Jan 1927-1989)

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