A.Word.A.Day --reprehend

A.Word.A.Day

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May 26, 2014

This week's theme
Miscellaneous words

This week's words
reprehend
gravitas
languid
perfuse
noesis

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A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

For a change, this week we won't fit words into pigeonholes, we won't put labels on them, we won't assign them to a particular category or arrange them into a theme. They stand on their own.

The five words we've selected have nothing in common... well, if you try hard enough, you can probably find something, but enjoy this bouquet of assorted words, or salmagundi of syllables, if you will.

reprehend

PRONUNCIATION:

(rep-ri-HEND)

MEANING:

verb tr.: To disapprove or to reprimand.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin reprehendere (to hold back, to censure), from re- (intensive) + prehendere (to seize). Ultimately from the Indo-European root ghend-/ghed- (to seize or to take), which is also the source of pry, prey, spree, reprise, surprise, osprey, prison, get, impregnable, impresa, and prise. Earliest documented use: 1382.

USAGE:

"The false quotation was therefore one of those flashy worthless attempts at wit that I so much reprehend in others."
Patrick O'Brian; The Truelove; W.W. Norton; 1993.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Never cut what you can untie. -Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)

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