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Mar 10, 2017
This week’s theme
Back-formations

This week’s words
bludge
politick
allocute
adolesce
foray

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with Anu Garg

foray

PRONUNCIATION:
(FOR-ay)

MEANING:
noun:1. An initial attempt into a new activity or area.
 2. A sudden raid, especially for taking plunder.
verb tr.:To pillage.
verb intr.:To make one’s way into a new activity or area.

ETYMOLOGY:
Probably a back-formation from forayer (raider), from Old French forrer (to forage). Earliest documented use: 1400.

USAGE:
“There were brief forays into discomfiting reality, to be fair.”
Michael Den Tandt; Tory Hopefuls Avoid the Big Issues; Montreal Gazette (Canada); Feb 6, 2017.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. -Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer (1934-1996)

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