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Jan 1, 2014
This week's themeShort words This week's words bleb jilt pi yare ruck Discuss this week's words in our discussion forum: Wordsmith Talk A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Gargpi
PRONUNCIATION:
MEANING:
noun: 1. A confused mixture, originally a jumble of printing types. Also spelled as pie. 2. The 16th letter of the Greek alphabet. 3. A mathematical constant (approximately 3.14159), representing the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. ETYMOLOGY:
For 1: Origin uncertain. Earliest documented use: 1659. For 2, 3: From Greek pi/pei, of Semitic origin. Earliest documented use: 1425. USAGE:
"The Indiana soldier's letter, however, 'has completely `knocked into pi`
all the arguments [they have] employed.'" Glenn David Brasher; Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation; The University of North Carolina Press; 2012. See more usage examples of pi in Vocabulary.com's dictionary. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order. -Alfred North Whitehead, mathematician and philosopher (1861-1947)
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