A.Word.A.Day --grandezza

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Dec 25, 2023

This week’s theme
No el

This week’s words
grandezza
aquaphobia
juxtapositive
swanky
cruciform

Illustration: Anu Garg + AI

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

Here’s a quiz for you. Once a year, we give one of the characters in our writing system a break. A one-week vacation. The remaining 25 characters have to report for duty in this week’s words. Which character is it?

Here’s a hint: It’s the 12th one.

Need another hint? Observe that every other character is present in this writeup, except our vacationing friend.

What’s the answer? Hmmm, how do we show you the answer, if we can’t have that character appear here? A kind of paradox.

Here’s a workaround: We are going to have it appear at the end of this intro. Joyeux Noel!

grandezza

PRONUNCIATION:

(gran-DEZ-uh, -DET-suh)

MEANING:

noun: Grandeur, greatness, magnificence, etc.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Italian grandezza and Spanish grandeza, from Italian and Spanish grande (grand). Earliest documented use: 1629.

USAGE:

“The grandezza of Spanish ceremonial was just as easily joined to the lightness of Austria.”
Joseph Roth (Translator: Michael Hofmann); The Hotel Years; New Directions; 2015.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient observation than to any other reason. -Isaac Newton, physicist, mathematician, and philosopher (25 Dec 1642-1727)

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