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Mar 31, 2023
This week’s theme
Wheels

This week’s words
trochilic
rotiform
zodiac
exorbitant
encyclical

encyclical
Vatican stamps commemorating Pope Leo XIII’s encyclicals
“In his famous 1891 encyclical Rerum novarum, Pope Leo outlined the rights of workers to a fair wage, safe working conditions, and the formation of trade unions ...” See more

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

encyclical

PRONUNCIATION:
(in/en-SIK-li-kuhl)

MEANING:
noun: An official letter.
adjective: For wide circulation.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Greek kyklos (circle, cycle). Earliest documented use: 1616.

NOTES:
A more common word for an encyclical is circular. In the Roman Catholic Church, a letter from the pope to bishops, usually dealing with the matters of doctrine, is called an encyclical.

USAGE:
“[Robert Armstrong] also possessed a dry humour. One encyclical he sent to senior Whitehall officials deploring leaks was itself leaked. When the journalist, now filmmaker, Paul Greengrass, raised this during a Granada TV World in Action interview, Armstrong replied: ‘I was very sad that it took so long as six weeks to leak. I hoped it would leak much sooner than that.’”
Richard Norton-Taylor; Lord Armstrong of Ilminster; The Guardian (London, UK); Apr 5, 2020.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. -Leo Buscaglia, author, speaker and professor (31 Mar 1924-1998)

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