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Aug 2, 2016
This week’s theme
Verbs

This week’s words
calumniate
floccipend
exonerate
foozle
propitiate

100 trillion Zimbabwean dollar banknote
100 trillion Zimbabwean dollars
A banknote from 2009
Photo: Wikimedia

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

floccipend

PRONUNCIATION:
(FLOK-si-pend)

MEANING:
verb tr.: To regard as worthless.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin flocci, from floccus (tuft of wool) + pendere (to weigh or consider). Earliest documented use: 1548. A related word is floccinaucinihilipilification.

USAGE:
“Harvey was penned off among the ‘black sheep’ in a profession prone to floccipend odd locks of thought from woolly-headed thinkers.”
William Thomson; Bacon and Shakespeare on Vivisection; Sands & McDougall; 1881.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. -James Baldwin, writer (2 Aug 1924-1987)

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