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Oct 30, 2020
This week’s theme
Misc. words

This week’s words
coquelicot
capacious
double-talk
vaporous
luteous

luteous
Male Raorchestes luteolus vocalizing (also known as yellow bush frog)
Photo: Seshadri.K.S / Wikimedia

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Next week’s theme
Borrowed words
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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

luteous

PRONUNCIATION:
(LOO-tee-uhs)

MEANING:
adjective:
1. Of an orange-yellow or greenish-yellow color.
2. Muddy.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin luteus (yellow), from lutum (yellowweed, mud). Earliest documented use: 1656.

USAGE:
“Of the five-thousand-odd species of stinkbug in the world, the brown marmorated kind is the most destructive, the most annoying, and possibly the ugliest. It is roughly the size of a dime, although thicker, but its head is unusually small, even for an insect, which gives it an appropriately thuggish look. Its six legs prop its shield-shaped body up in the air, as if they were pallbearers at the funeral of a Knight Templar. Its antennae are striped with bands of dark and light, while its eyes, should you get close enough to gaze into them, are the vivid red of an alarm clock at night. The ‘marmorated’ in its name means ‘marbled’, but ‘mottled’ is closer to the truth. Entomologists, who have a color palette as elaborate as Benjamin Moore’s, describe the underside of its body as ‘distinctly pale luteous’.”
Kathryn Schulz; Home Invasion; The New Yorker; Mar 12, 2018.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof (White House). -John Adams, 2nd US President, and the first one to live in the White House (30 Oct 1735-1826)

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