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Jul 30, 2020
This week’s theme
Words having origins in tree names

This week’s words
corroborate
palmary
willowy
birch
fig

birch
birch
Mother uses a birch rod to punish her son (detail), 1880

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

birch

PRONUNCIATION:
(buhrch)

MEANING:
noun:1. Any of various hardy trees or shrubs of the genus Betula.
 2. A birch twig or a bundle of them.
verb tr.:1. To beat with (or as if with) a birch.
 2. To admonish or to punish.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Old English berc/beorc. Earliest documented use: 700.

USAGE:
“Even after it became aware of suspected money-laundering in accounts, CBA [The Commonwealth Bank of Australia] didn’t monitor its customers ... [Nicole Rose, CEO of AUSTRAC, the anti-money-laundering unit performed] a thorough birching of the nation’s biggest financial institution.”
Richard Gluyas; Everything Failed, but Now Comyn Can Start Rebuilding; The Australian (Canberra); Jun 5, 2018.

See more usage examples of birch in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
If there were dreams to sell, / What would you buy? / Some cost a passing bell; / Some a light sigh, / That shakes from life's fresh crown / Only a rose-leaf down. -Thomas Lovell Beddoes, poet, dramatist, and physician (30 Jun 1803-1849)

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