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Jul 9, 2021
This week’s theme
Words used metaphorically

This week’s words
papier-mache
sough
woolgathering
scabby
flagship

flagship
The Victory, Nelson’s Flagship, c. 1890s
Photo: LOC

flagship
Tiffany’s flagship store, Fifth Ave, NY
Photo: David Shankbone / Wikimedia

This week’s comments
AWADmail 993

Next week’s theme
Words coined after buildings and venues
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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

flagship

PRONUNCIATION:
(FLAG-ship)

MEANING:
noun:
1. A ship that carries the fleet commander and flies the commander’s flag.
2. The best or the most important of a group of things.

ETYMOLOGY:
From flag, of obscure origin + ship, from Old English scip. Earliest documented use: 1672.

NOTES:
The word flagship is often used attributively, for example, a flagship store, a flagship university, etc. An attributive noun is a noun that describes another noun, for example, the word table in tablecloth.

USAGE:
“I was capitalising on my success as a business owner by opening a flagship shop for my leather bags for men and women.”
Rosa Temple; Playing for Keeps; HarperCollins; 2018.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
We now know that memories are not fixed or frozen, like Proust's jars of preserves in a larder, but are transformed, disassembled, reassembled, and recategorized with every act of recollection. -Oliver Sacks, neurologist and writer (9 Jul 1933-2015)

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