This week’s theme
Words borrowed from Native American languages

This week’s words
cornpone
bayou
sagamore
mugwump
totem


This week’s comments
AWADmail 851

Next week’s theme
Words related to the eye

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(TOH-tuhm)

MEANING:

noun: A person, object, group, etc. that serves as an emblem or symbol.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Ojibwe/Ojibwa language of the Algonquian language family in North America. Earliest documented use: 1609.

USAGE:

“The Beats, so long a totem of countercultural cool, now seem anomalous, even old-school.”
Peter Murphy; The Beats That My Heart Skipped; Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland); Jul 1, 2017.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: