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Oct 30, 2008
This week's theme
Contranyms, or words with an opposite set of meanings.

This week's words
cleave
continuance
asperse
copemate
quiddity

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

copemate, also copesmate

PRONUNCIATION:
(KOP-mayt)

MEANING:
noun:
1. An associate or friend.
2. An opponent or adversary.

ETYMOLOGY:
From French couper (to cut), from Latin colpus (blow), from Greek kolaphos (blow with the fist) + mate (fellow).

USAGE:
"I let go of [the gown's] gaping back long enough to turn around, grin and give a big OK sign to Ms. Harper's Bazaar, our copemate, our friend."
Dorothy Fredericks; Breezy is Fashionable; The Seattle Times; Aug 25, 1991.

"Weigh gentlemen, and consider, whether my affirmations, back'd with reason, may hold balance against the bare denials of ... my copesmate."
John Milton; Colasterion; 1645.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Of all plagues with which mankind is cursed, ecclesiastic tyranny's the worst. -Daniel Defoe, novelist and journalist (1659?-1731)

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