GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Alleviate [uh-LEE-vee-ayt] 📖 What It Means: To alleviate something is to make it less painful, difficult, or severe. Alleviate can also mean "to partially remove or correct." 📰 Example: There's no cure for the common cold, but there are various treatments that may alleviate some of the symptoms. 💬 In Context: "The funds are meant to alleviate monetary barriers and enhance the fashion industry's talent pipeline." — Rosemary Feitelberg, Footwear News, 30 Oct. 2025 💡 Did You Know? Now for a bit of light reading. Alleviate comes from Latin levis, meaning "having little weight." (Levis also gave rise to the English adjective light as in "not heavy.") In its early days during the 16th century, alleviate could mean both "to cause (something) to have less weight" or "to make (something) more tolerable." The literal "make lighter" sense is no longer used, and today only the "relieve, lessen" sense remains. Incidentally, not only is alleviate a synonym of relieve, it's also a cousin: relieve comes from Latin levare ("to raise"), which in turn comes from levis. 🔗
Word of the Day: Hibernaculum
If you’re afraid of snakes or bats, you probably won’t enjoy thinking about hibernacula, where hundreds, even thousands, of these creatures mig...
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GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Waggish [WAG-ish] 📖 What It Means: Waggish describes someone who is silly and playful, and especially someone who displays a mischievous sense of humor. The word can also describe things that such a person might do or possess. 📰 Example: He had a waggish disposition that could irk adults but typically delighted children. 💬 In Context: “[Patricia] Lockwood began her writing life quietly, as a poet. She found her first major audience on Twitter, posting self-proclaimed ‘absurdities’ ... that quickly came to define the medium’s zany, waggish ethos ...” — Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker, 25 Aug. 2025 💡 Did You Know? One who is waggish acts like a wag. What, then, is a wag? It has nothing to do with a dog’s tail; in this case a wag is a clever person prone to joking. Though light-hearted in its use and meaning, the probable source of this particular wag is grim: it is thought to be short for waghalter, an obsolete English word that translates as gallows bird, a gallows bird being someone thought to be deserving of hanging (wag being the familiar wag having to do with movement, and halter referring to a noose). Despite its gloomy origins, waggish is now often associated with humor and playfulness—a wag is a joker, and waggery is merriment or practical joking. Waggish can describe the prank itself as well as the prankster type; the class clown might be said to have a “waggish disposition” or be prone to “waggish antics.” 🔗
Word of the Day: Hibernaculum
If you’re afraid of snakes or bats, you probably won’t enjoy thinking about hibernacula, where hundreds, even thousands, of these creatures mig...
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GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Leviathan [luh-VYE-uh-thun] 📖 What It Means: Leviathan is a word with literary flair that can refer broadly to something very large and powerful, or more narrowly to a large sea animal, or a totalitarian state having a vast bureaucracy. 📰 Example: Towering leviathans of the forest, giant sequoias often reach heights of more than 200 feet. 💬 In Context: “These are dim days for the leviathan merchants. The smart whaling families have diversified and will hang onto their wealth for years to come. ... The less smart, those convulsed by the strange desire to continue doing what had always been done, who consider it a divinely issued directive to rid the waves of great fish, now face a problem: the Atlantic whale that built their houses and ships has seemingly wised up ...” — Ethan Rutherford, North Sun, or The Voyage of the Whaleship Esther: A Novel, 2025 💡 Did You Know? Old Testament references to a huge sea monster, Leviathan (in Hebrew, Liwyāthān), are thought to have been inspired by an ancient myth in which the god Baal slays a multiheaded sea monster. Leviathan appears in the Book of Psalms as a sea serpent that is killed by God and then given as food to creatures in the wilderness, and it is mentioned in the Book of Job as well. After making a splash in English in the 1300s, the word Leviathan began to be used, capitalized and uncapitalized, for enormous sea creatures both imagined and real—including as a synonym of whale over 100 times in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, as in “ere the Pequod’s weedy hull rolls side by side with the barnacled hulls of the leviathan.” Today, leviathan can be used for anything large and powerful, from ships to corporations. 🔗
Word of the Day: Hibernaculum
If you’re afraid of snakes or bats, you probably won’t enjoy thinking about hibernacula, where hundreds, even thousands, of these creatures mig...
 #WordOfTheDay #Nostr #Dictionary #Learning
GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Grift [GRIFT] 📖 What It Means: To grift is to use dishonest tricks to illegally take money or property. 📰 Example: The email scammer shamelessly grifted thousands of dollars from unwitting victims. 💬 In Context: "When the families demanded he return the jewellery he had grifted from them he arranged meetings and then did not show." — Peter Spriggs, The Echo (South Essex, England), 31 Oct. 2025 💡 Did You Know? Someone who grifts is a thief, but of a particular sort: they illegally obtain money or property by means of cleverness or deceit, and do not usually resort to physical force or violence. A grifter might be a pickpocket, a crooked gambler, a scammer, or a con artist. The most plausible etymology we have for the murky term is that grift is an early 20th century alteration of graft, a slightly older word which refers to the acquisition of money or property in dishonest or questionable ways. Both grift and graft have noun and verb forms. 🔗
Word of the Day: Hibernaculum
If you’re afraid of snakes or bats, you probably won’t enjoy thinking about hibernacula, where hundreds, even thousands, of these creatures mig...
 #WordOfTheDay #Nostr #Dictionary #Learning
GM ☀️ Your word of the day is! 🔤 Paltry [PAWL-tree] 📖 What It Means: Paltry is a formal word that can describe something that is very small or too small in amount, or something that has little meaning, importance, or worth. 📰 Example: They're offering a paltry salary for the position. 💬 In Context: "When the witty and wry English fantasy novelist Terry Pratchett interviewed Bill Gates for GQ in 1995, only 39% of Americans had access to a home computer. According to the Pew Research Center, the number who were connected to the internet was a paltry 14%." — Ed Simon, LitHub.com, 25 Nov. 2024 💡 Did You Know? Before paltry was an adjective, it was a noun meaning trash. That now-obsolete noun came from palt or pelt, a dialect term referring to a piece of coarse cloth, or more broadly, to trash. The adjective paltry, which dates to the mid-16th century, originally described things considered worthless, or of very low quality, but it's gained a number of meanings over the centuries, none of which are complimentary. A paltry house might be neglected and unfit for occupancy; a paltry trick is a trick that is low-down and dirty; a paltry excuse is a poor one; and a paltry sum is small and insufficient. 🔗
Word of the Day: Hibernaculum
If you’re afraid of snakes or bats, you probably won’t enjoy thinking about hibernacula, where hundreds, even thousands, of these creatures mig...
 #WordOfTheDay #Nostr #Dictionary #Learning