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Nov 24, 2017
This week’s theme
Words that have changed

This week’s words
parboil
notorious
vedette
acerate
egregious

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

egregious

PRONUNCIATION:
(i-GREE-juhs, -jee-uhs)

MEANING:
adjective: Remarkable in a bad way; flagrant.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin egregius (outstanding), from ex- (out of) + greg-, stem of grex (flock). Earlier something egregious was one that stood out because it was remarkably good. Over the centuries the word took a 180-degree turn and today it refers to something grossly offensive. Earliest documented use: 1550.

USAGE:
“The most egregious example of this sort of scapegoating came last week, when Italy’s Giovanni Trapattoni blamed Ecuadorean ref Byron Moreno for the Azzuri’s inglorious defeat by South Korea.”
Aparisim Ghosh, Lay Off the Refs: The Men in Black Shouldn’t Take Heat from a Bunch of Sore Losers; Time International, Jul 1, 2002.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead. -Arundhati Roy, writer and activist (b. 24 Nov 1961)

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