A.Word.A.Day --vizard

A.Word.A.Day

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Jul 14, 2014

This week's theme
Words that appear to be misspellings

This week's words
vizard
grogram
secretory
factitious
proem

A horseman with his wife in a vizard

16th century. Artist unknown

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

I love optical illusions and one of my favorite is the checker shadow illusion. This week's words are a kind of illusion. They are spelled correctly, but you may wonder if they are misspelled.

It's just that each of these words has a spelling very similar to an everyday word. So keep calm and spell on. And if your spellchecker makes a noise, give it a click on the backside and tell it you have everything under control.

vizard or visard

PRONUNCIATION:

(VIZ-uhrd)

MEANING:

noun: A visor, mask, or disguise.

ETYMOLOGY:

A variant of visor, from Anglo-French viser, from vis (face), from visus (sight), from videre (to see). Ultimately from the Indo-European root weid- (to see), which is also the source of guide, wise, vision, advice, idea, story, history, previse, polyhistor, invidious, hades, eidos, and eidetic. Earliest documented use: 1555.

USAGE:

"The birds wear floor-length costumes, and Princess Victoria actually comes from the Veneto, bearing a vizard (the beaked plague-doctor's mask)."
The ABC of Fabulous Princesses; Kirkus Reviews (New York); Dec 15, 2013.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

The power to define the situation is the ultimate power. -Jerry Rubin, activist and author (1938-1994)

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