Jan 18, 2010 This week's theme

Miscellaneous words



This week's words

asperity

obscurantism

sedulous

surcease

lineament Discuss

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RSS/XML Miscellaneous words A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg



Have you ever opened a dictionary to look up a word, only to find yourself distracted by another word on the page? The definition of that word steers you to yet another, some two hundred pages ahead, and before you know it your fingers are cavorting as if in a random dance on the leaves of the lexicon.



This week's words in AWAD were chosen by following precisely that route. You could call it Brownian Motion, Browsing the Web, or Looking Words Up In a Dictionary. asperity PRONUNCIATION: (ah-SPER-i-tee)

MEANING: noun: Harshness or roughness.



ETYMOLOGY: Via French from Latin asper (rough).



USAGE: "We must expect posterity

to view with some asperity

the marvels and the wonders

we're passing on to it;

but it should change its attitude

to one of heartfelt gratitude

when thinking of the blunders

we didn't quite commit."

Our Greatest Achievement; Piet Hein; Grooks.



"Dressed in Robert Jones's well-cut, earth-toned '60s' pantsuits, Lagerfelt wittily mixes languor and asperity."

David Benedict; Greta Garbo Came to Donegal; Variety (Los Angeles); Jan 13, 2010.



See more usage examples of asperity in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.



A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: Real misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the world; since it is experience of life, and not philosophy, which produces real hatred of mankind. -Giacomo Leopardi, poet, essayist, and philosopher (1798-1837)





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