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Mar 30, 2018
This week’s theme
Words described using their anagrams

This week’s words
listerize
adulatory
babble
metathesis
blate

This week’s comments
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Next week’s theme
Coined words
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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

blate

PRONUNCIATION:
(blayt)

MEANING:
verb intr.: To babble or to cry.
adjective: Timid.

ANAGRAM:
blate = bleat

ETYMOLOGY:
For verb: Apparently an alteration of bleat, whose earlier pronunciation rhymed with the word great. Earliest documented use: 1878.
For adjective: From Scots blate (timid, sheepish). Earliest documented use: 1000.

USAGE:
“The sound of frogs blating like new calves from the culvert horn of the ramp.”
Janice Daugharty; Vision Quest; 2010.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words. -Anna Sewell, writer (30 Mar 1820-1878)

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