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Aug 9, 2023
This week’s theme
Adjectives

This week’s words
culminant
perficient
reprehensible
nondescript
ostrobogulous

reprehensible
Illustration: Anu Garg + AI

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A.Word.A.Day
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reprehensible

PRONUNCIATION:
(ruh-pri-HEN-suh-buhl)

MEANING:
adjective: Deserving criticism or condemnation.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin reprehendere (to hold back, to censure), from re- (intensive) + prehendere (to seize). Ultimately from the Indo-European root ghend-/ghed- (to seize or to take), which is also the source of pry, prey, spree, reprise, surprise, osprey, prison, impregnable, impresa, prise, and reprehend. Earliest documented use: 1384.

USAGE:
“Economists should treat threats to future lives as just as morally reprehensible as present threats to our own.”
Future Lives Matter; The Economist (London, UK); Dec 8, 2018.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive, and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered. -Jean Piaget, psychologist (9 Aug 1896-1980)

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