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Apr 27, 2017
This week’s theme
Toponyms

This week’s words
sybaritic
dalmatic
sardine
frieze
pierian

frieze in Khajuraho temples, India
Khajuraho temples, India

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

frieze

PRONUNCIATION:
(freez)

MEANING:
noun:
1. A decorative horizontal band, as on a building.
2. A coarse woolen fabric.

ETYMOLOGY:
For 1: After Phrygia, an ancient country in Asia Minor, noted for embroidery. Earliest documented use: 1563.
For 2: From French frise, perhaps from Latin frisia (Frisian wool). Earliest documented use: 1418.

USAGE:
“He took his place in the line stretching to the next block; attached his chinless profile to the sooty frieze of faces.”
Seth Morgan; Homeboy; Random House; 1990.

“Like handles on either side, they stick out from his head with a frieze of grey tuft embedded in the inner curve.”
Anita Nair; The Better Man; Picador; 2015.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority, but that of reason. -Mary Wollstonecraft, reformer and writer (27 Apr 1759-1797)

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