This week's theme
Random words

This week's words
incommodious
mendacity
marmoreal
tenuous
hiemal

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(TEN-yoo-uhs)

MEANING:

adjective: Very weak; unsubstantiated; thin.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin tenuis (thin). Ultimately from the Indo-European root ten- (to stretch), which is also the source of tense, tenet, tendon, tent, tenor, tender, pretend, extend, tenure, tetanus, hypotenuse, tenable, extenuate, countenance, pertinacious, and detente. Earliest documented use: 1597.

USAGE:

"[Arizona governor Jan] Brewer's grasp of facts is tenuous: she told The Arizona Republic in 2010 that her father died fighting the Nazis in Germany, when he died a decade after the end of the war."
Maureen Dowd; Tension on the Tarmac; The New York Times; Jan 28, 2012.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: