This week’s theme
Words with Seattle connections

This week’s words
skid row
spacearium
ecotopia
space needle
grunge

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(SPAYS need-uhl)

MEANING:

noun: A tall slender tower.

ETYMOLOGY:

After the Space Needle, a tower in Seattle. Earliest documented use: 1962.

NOTES:

This 605-foot-tall structure was built for the 1962 World’s Fair. Its design -- a flying-saucer crown atop slender legs -- was intended to capture the optimism of the space age. It’s Seattle’s way of saying, “Rain or shine, the future lands here.”

USAGE:

“The Ocean City Boardwalk needs a space needle. People could look out over the ocean, across the highway to the bay, the entire length of Ocean City and all the way to Assateague Island.”
Jonathan Bleiweis; 11 Shore Destinations We’d Definitely Visit; Daily Times (Salisbury, Maryland); Mar 21, 2014.

“On the bus back to the airport, we coasted along the riverside and scenes of unalloyed pleasantness flowed by: riverside gardens, a distant hill with a space needle ... as we reached Incheon.”
Mark Jones; Seoul Searching; The Independent (London, UK); Feb 13, 2019.

See more usage examples of space needle in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: