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Oct 21, 2020
This week’s themeWords that appear to be coined after presidential candidates This week’s words bident trumpery pensive devi joe 
“You have to fall in love with hanging around words.” ~John CiardiSpread the love to friends & family 
A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Gargpensive
PRONUNCIATION:
(PEN-siv)
MEANING:
adjective: Sadly thoughtful; wistful.
ETYMOLOGY:
From Old French pensif (pensive), from penser (to think), from Latin pensare
(ponder), frequentative of pendere (to weigh). Ultimately from the
Indo-European root (s)pen- (to draw, to spin), which also gave us pendulum,
spider, pound, pansy, pendant, ponder, appendix, penthouse, depend,
spontaneous,
vilipend,
pendulous,
ponderous,
filipendulous,
equipoise,
perpend, and
prepend.
Earliest documented use: 1393.
USAGE:
“When we met last spring, I expected the Belfast-born investor ... to be
elated. Instead, I found him to be pensive and almost post-traumatic.” Dearbhail McDonald; ‘Nama Nearly Destroyed Me’ -- Top London Hotelier; Sunday Independent (Dublin, Ireland); Sep 18, 2016. See more usage examples of pensive in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a
history of boneheads: ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political
leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant generals, the flotsam and jetsam of
historical currents. The men who radically altered history, the great
creative scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned if at all.
-Martin Gardner, mathematician and writer (21 Oct 1914-2010)
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