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May 7, 2012 This week's theme Miscellaneous words This week's words tenable casuistry discrepant consuetudinary unavailing Discuss Feedback RSS/XML 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. We'll just let them be. 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 a salmagundi of syllables, if you will. tenable PRONUNCIATION: (TEN-uh-buhl) MEANING: adjective: Capable of being held or defended. ETYMOLOGY: From French tenable, from tenir (to hold), from Latin tenere (to hold). Ultimately from the Indo-European root ten- (to stretch), which also gave us tense, tenet, tendon, tent, tenor, tender, pretend, extend, tenure, tetanus, hypotenuse, pertinacious, and detente. Earliest documented use: 1604. USAGE: "Pretending that countries can somehow 'go it alone' is no longer tenable: we trade with each other, we invest in each other, and we employ each other's workers." Stephen King; We're Stuck in a Time of Economic Permafrost; The Times (London, UK); Dec 27, 2011. Explore "tenable" in the Visual Thesaurus. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: Better than a thousand days of diligent study is one day with a great teacher. -Japanese proverb

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