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Dec 18, 2012
This week's theme
Yours to discover

This week's words
wakerife
quadrennium
subjugate
xerophyte
conversazione

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

quadrennium

PRONUNCIATION:
(kwa-DREN-ee-uhm)

MEANING:
noun: A period of four years.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin quadri (four) + annus (year), ultimately from the Indo-European root at- (to go), which is also the source of annual, annals, annuity, anniversary, and perennial. Earliest documented use: 1779.

USAGE:
"Maybe it's because I'm an Olympic dad, but my wife and I had a baby each quadrennium."
Jean Lopez, et al.; Family Power; Celebra; 2009.

See more usage examples of quadrennium in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf and take an insect view of its plain. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

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