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:

(vuhr-BIJ-uh-rayt)

MEANING:

verb intr.: To obsessively repeat meaningless words and phrases.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin verbigerare (to talk, chat), from verbum (word) + gerere (to carry on). Earliest documented use: 1656.

USAGE:

“Then she started verbigerating ‘Hallelujah’ for hours.”
C.G. Jung; Collected Works of C.G. Jung: Psychogenesis of Mental Disease, Vol 3; Princeton University Press; 1960.

“[Raymond Poincare] never varied his ideas, seldom his expressions; for his whole term in 1922-24 he went on stubbornly verbigerating in the face of history.”
Vincent Sheean; Personal History; Doubleday; 1935.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: