This week’s theme
Words that aren’t what they appear to be

This week’s words
toxophily
supercargo
votive
verbigerate
recreant

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(soo-puhr-KAHR-goh)

MEANING:

noun:
1. An officer on a merchant ship who is in charge of the cargo.
2. A superintendent or an agent.

ETYMOLOGY:

By alteration of supracargo, from Spanish sobrecargo, from sobre (over), from Latin super (super) + cargo. Earliest documented use: 1667.

USAGE:

“Thurso carries a passenger nobody sees but himself, a kind of divine supercargo who relays messages from some more abstract deity.”
Barry Unsworth; Sacred Hunger; Hamish Hamilton; 1992.

“Robert Campbell of the University of Rhode Island, one of Healey’s supercargo of scientists, outlined the details.”
Awakening; The Economist (London, UK); Feb 14, 2015.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: