This week’s theme
Four-letter words

This week’s words
yerk
unco
saga
diel
alar

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(UHNG-koh)

MEANING:

adjective: Unusual; remarkable; strange.
adverb: Remarkably; extremely.
noun: 1. A stranger. 2. News.

ETYMOLOGY:

A variant of uncouth, from uncuth, from un- (not) + cuth (known), from cunnan (to know). Ultimately from the Indo-European root gno- (to know), which also gave us know, recognize, acquaint, ignore, diagnosis, notice, normal, agnosia, anagnorisis, prosopagnosia, cognize, gnomon, and kenning. Earliest documented use: 1410.

USAGE:

“‘You’re unco late, dear,’ she would say wearily.”
George Douglas Brown; The House with the Green Shutters; McClure, Phillips & Co.; 1902.

“Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears.”
Robert Burns; The Cotter’s Saturday Night; 1785.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: