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Oct 20, 2025
This week’s themeAdjectives This week’s words 
Giant Lemon in Rail Car, 1910
Illustration: Edward Henri Mitchell Previous week’s theme Idioms & metaphors 
A.Word.A.Day
with Anu GargVerbs make things happen and nouns make things exist, but adjectives make things matter. They decide whether your day is good, your coffee strong, or your boss unreasonable. They’re opinionated, judgmental, and gloriously subjective, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. Language would be dull gray without them. They’re the pigments that let us paint details: a blue sky, a brilliant idea, a bitter truth. Strip them away, and the world collapses into nouns and verbs: objects and actions, but no texture. This week, we celebrate those often-small words that tint our thoughts and give sentences flavor, feeling, and flair. The word adjective comes to us from Latin adjectivum, literally, that is added (to the noun). So feel free to add them to any nouns, but just like spices, a little goes a long way to bring out the flavor. acerbic
PRONUNCIATION:
(uh-SUHR-bik)
MEANING:
adjective: 1. Having a sour or bitter taste. 2. Harsh, biting, critical. ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin acerbus (sour, bitter). Ultimately from the Indo-European
root ak- (sharp), which is also the source of acrid, vinegar, acid, acute,
edge, hammer, heaven, eager, oxygen, mediocre,
acerbate,
acerate,
paragon,
acuity, and
acidic.
Earliest documented use: 1853.
NOTES:
An acerbic remark can sting like lemon juice on a paper cut.
And you thought it was mere coincidence that the word citric and critic
are anagrams? Sweetness flatters; acerbity clarifies. A touch of the
sour keeps it honest. A citric note cuts through sentimentality and
keeps conversation from turning syrupy.
USAGE:
“The infamously acerbic Hans von Bülow, while on an American tour, became
so irritated at the promotional efforts of the Chickering piano company
that he took out a jackknife and scraped the brand’s name off the
instrument.” Alex Ross; Thoroughly Modern; The New Yorker; Jun 3, 2024. See more usage examples of acerbic in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
A society which is mobile, which is full of channels for the distribution
of a change occurring anywhere, must see to it that its members are
educated to personal initiative and adaptability. Otherwise, they will be
overwhelmed by the changes in which they are caught and whose significance
or connections they do not perceive. -John Dewey, philosopher,
psychologist, and educational reformer (20 Oct 1859-1952)
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