This week's theme
Words that have many unrelated meanings

This week's words
consonance
levee
prow
rote
loblolly

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(prou)

MEANING:

noun:
1. The front of a ship or a boat above the water; the bow.
2. The projecting front part of something, as a building.
adjective:
3. Valiant.

ETYMOLOGY:

For 1-2: From Middle French proue, from Old Italian dialect prua, from Latin prora. Ultimately from the Indo-European root per- (forward), which also gave us paramount, prime, proton, Czech prám (raft), German Frau (woman), and Hindi purana (old). Earliest documented use: 1555.
For 3: From Middle French prou, from Old English prud. Earliest documented use: 1350.

USAGE:

"With his hard nose protruding like a ship's prow ... he took to business as if it were war."
Cornelius Vanderbilt: Bare-Knuckled Capitalism; The Economist (London, UK); Apr 16, 2009.

"Forty years on, Sir Henry Bunbury remembered him as '... the prowest of Black Edward's knights.'"
Piers Mackesy; British Victory in Egypt, 1801: The End of Napoleon's Conquest; Routledge; 1995.

See more usage examples of prow in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: