This week’s theme
Words that sound dirty, but aren’t

This week’s words
crotchet
bumbaze
cumbrous


Wordsmith Games

🧩	Jigsaw Riddle The Castle Builders
🌍	Langitude Trace dollar home

A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(KUHM-bruhs)

MEANING:

adjective: Difficult to carry, use, or manage, especially because of size, weight, or complexity.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Old French encombrer (to hinder), from combre (dam). Earliest documented use: before 1400.

NOTES:

The suggestive opening syllable is innocent: cumbrous is cumber + -ous, with the e squeezed out. Put cumbrous to work when unwieldy can’t handle the load. A cumberworld is a useless person, literally someone who encumbers the world.

USAGE:

“The cumbrous title transcribes a certain number of days into years and months ...”
Ursula K. Le Guin; Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie Review: A Modern Arabian Nights; The Guardian (London, UK); Sep 4, 2015.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: