This week’s theme
Words that appear to be misspellings

This week’s words
cliticize
ordonnance
settlor
exorcise
equipollent

Internet Anagram Server
I, Rearrangement Servant
May I try your name?

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(OR-dn-uhns, or-duh-NAHNS)

MEANING:

noun: The systematic arrangement of parts in art, literature, architecture, etc.

ETYMOLOGY:

From French, from alteration of Old French ordenance (order), from Latin ordinantia, from ordinare (to put in order), from ordo (order). Earliest documented use: 1660.

NOTES:

The same Old French ordenance has also given us two more cousins of today’s word. So the whole lineup is:
ordnance: military supplies
ordinance: an order, decree, law, etc.
ordonnance: a systematic arrangement
I say we go back to communicating in grunts.

USAGE:

“[Bishop Lancelot] Andrewes takes a word and derives the world from it; squeezing and squeezing the word until it yields a full juice of meaning which we should never have supposed any word to possess. In this process the qualities which we have mentioned, of ordonnance and precision, are exercised.”
William H. Pritchard; The Prose Eliot; The Hudson Review (New York); Spring 2015.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: