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Jun 9, 2004
This week's theme
Verbs

This week's words
amerce
deracinate
wamble
embrangle
obtund

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

wamble

Pronunciation RealAudio

(WOM-buhl) verb intr.

1. To move unsteadily; to totter, waver, roll, etc.
2. To feel nausea.
3. (Of a stomach) To rumble or growl.

noun

1. An unsteady motion.
2. A feeling of nausea.

[From Middle English wamelen (to feel nausea). Ultimately from Indo-European root wem- (to vomit) that's also the source of words such as vomit and emetic (something that induces vomiting).]

"In her (Janice Daugharty's) hands, dogs don't just run and bark at moving wagons. Instead, 'rawboned and hollow, the ... heart-faced curs came on, yipping at the spinning wagon wheels and wambling between the legs of the horses."
Hal Jacobs; Reading the South: New fiction; The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Georgia); May 27, 2004

"But then add the black warrior: the focus settles on the black guy, the theme blurs, the angle grows acute, the last reel resolution wambles."
Thomas Cripps; Frederick Douglass: The Absent Presence in Glory; The Massachusetts Review (Amherst); Spring 1995.

X-Bonus

Everyone wishes to have truth on his side, but not everyone wishes to be on the side of truth. -Richard Whately, philosopher, reformer, theologian, economist (1787-1863)

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