This week’s theme
There’s a word for it!

This week’s words
glossophobia
agathokakological
pensum
perlage
sialoquent

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(PEN-suhm)

MEANING:

noun: A task given, especially as a punishment.

ETYMOLOGY:

In the beginning, a pensum was the amount of wool to be spun. Eventually, the word became generic and came to refer to a piece of work or task. Later, it morphed into another specialized form: a task given as a school punishment. The word is from Latin pendere (to hang, weigh), ultimately from the Indo-European root (s)pen- (to draw, to stretch, to spin), which also gave us pendulum, spider, pound, pansy, pendant, ponder, appendix, penthouse, depend, spontaneous, vilipend, filipendulous, perpend, equipoise, pendulous, and pensive. Earliest documented use: 1667.

USAGE:

“I preferred this to the hand-cramping pensums Mademoiselle would think up, such as making me copy out two hundred times the proverb Qui aime bien, châtie bien [Spare the rod and spoil the child].”
Vladimir Nabokov; Speak, Memory; Victor Gollancz; 1951.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: