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Feb 9, 2016
This week’s theme
Eponyms (words coined after people)

This week’s words
maecenas
guy
victorian
gongorism
gongorism
Addisonian

Guy Fawkes
Guy Fawkes, detail from the book Peeps into the Past, c.1900. Art: Trelleek

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

guy

PRONUNCIATION:
(guy)

MEANING:
noun: A man (in plural, persons of either sex).
verb tr.: To make fun of; ridicule.

noun: A rope to steady, guide, or secure something.
verb tr.: To steady, guide, or secure something with a rope.

ETYMOLOGY:
For set 1:After Guy Fawkes (1570-1606), a conspirator in the failed attempt to blow up England’s Parliament in 1605. Earliest documented use: 1874.
For set 2: From Old French guie (guide), from guier (to guide). Ultimately from the Indo-European root weid- (to see), which is also the source of guide, wise, vision, advice, idea, story, history, polyhistor, invidious, hades, eidos, eidetic, previse, vidimus, and vizard. Earliest documented use: 1375.

USAGE:
“There was much guying of America’s Tea Party movement or teabaggers, as some hilariously call themselves.”
Veronica Lee; Bigots and the PC Brigade are Expertly Skewered; The Independent (London, UK); May 27, 2015.

“Ropes guyed it down to the goalpost crossbars.”
Ian McDonald; Kirinya; Gollancz; 1998.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
He who would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. -Thomas Paine, philosopher and writer (9 Feb 1737-1809)

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