This week’s theme
Usage examples from well-known authors

This week’s words
behoof
comminute
maffick
inhere
spavined

This week’s comments
AWADmail 755

Next week’s theme
Words that keep glowing even with a burnt-out letter

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(SPAV-ind)

MEANING:

adjective: 1. Suffering from spavin, a disease involving swelling of hock joints in a horse. 2. Old; decrepit; broken-down.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Old French espavain (swelling). Earliest documented use: 1430.

USAGE:

“If they ever praise each other’s bad drawings, or broken-winded novels, or spavined verses, nobody ever supposed it was from admiration; it was simply a contract between themselves and a publisher or dealer.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes; The Long Jolt on Public Opinion; The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table; 1858.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: