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Discuss Email this Feedback RSS/XML Permalink A.Word.A.Day--diacritical This week's theme: miscellaneous words. diacritical (dy-uh-KRIT-i-kuhl) adjective 1. Distinctive; capable of distinguishing. 2. Serving as a diacritic (a mark, such as ^ or ~ or other accent marks, added to a letter to distinguish it from a similar letter, for example, to distinguish resume from résumé). [From Greek diakritikos (distinctive), from diakrinein (to distinguish), from dia- (apart) + krinein (to separate). Ultimately from the Indo-European root krei- (to sift or to discriminate) that also gave us crime, crisis, certain, excrement, secret, critic, garble, and hypocrisy.] Today's word in Visual Thesaurus. -Anu Garg (garg wordsmith.org) "In a pertinent, diacritical chapter of this work, Stallabrass surveys the paucity of art criticism in turn-of-the-century Britain." Will Self; I Danced to a Decadent Drum; New Statesman (London, UK); Jan 31, 2000. X-Bonus Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom. -Theodore Rubin, psychiatrist and writer (b. 1923)

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