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Jun 2, 2015
This week’s theme
There is a word for it

This week’s words
sinecure
pathography
performative
stridulate
mala fide

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

pathography

PRONUNCIATION:
(puh-THOG-ruh-fee)

MEANING:
noun: A biography that focuses on the negative.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Greek patho- (suffering, disease) + -graphy (writing). In the beginning, pathography was a description of a disease. Then the word came to be applied to the study of an individual or a community as relating to the influence of a disease. Now the term mostly refers to a biography focusing on the negative. Earliest documented use: 1848.

USAGE:
“Pizzichini’s book, though nonjudgmental, still feels like a pathography.”
Mick Sussman; The Blue Hour; The New York Times; Jul 19, 2009.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The business of the poet and the novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things. -Thomas Hardy, novelist and poet (2 Jun 1840-1928)

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