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Mar 4, 2011
This week's theme
Words borrowed from German

This week's words
sitzfleisch
ersatz
lebensraum
diktat
schwarmerei

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

schwarmerei

PRONUNCIATION:
(shver-muh-RY)

MEANING:
noun:
1. Extravagant enthusiasm.
2. Excessive sentimentality.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Schwärmerei (enthusiasm), from schwärmen (to swarm, to be wild or mad about). Earliest documented use: 1845.

USAGE:
"True fulfillment flowed solely from whatever they had in common, for that was always a condition of schwarmerei."
Jonathan Thomas; Midnight Call and Other Stories; Hippocampus Press; 2008.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. -John F. Kennedy, 35th US president (1917-1963)

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