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Jan 1, 2014
This week's theme
Short words

This week's words
bleb
jilt
pi
yare
ruck

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

pi

PRONUNCIATION:
(py)

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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