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Jul 30, 2010 This week's theme Words that aren't what they appear to be This week's words artificer noisome psychopomp fulsome meretricious Make a gift that keeps on giving, all year long: A gift subscription of AWAD or give the gift of books Discuss Feedback RSS/XML A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg meretricious PRONUNCIATION: (mer-i-TRISH-uhs) MEANING: adjective: 1. Appealing in a cheap or showy manner: tawdry. 2. Based on pretense or insincerity. ETYMOLOGY: From Latin meretricius, meretrix (prostitute), from merere (to earn money). USAGE: "For most of the 20th century John Singer Sargent's skills as a portraitist were deemed to be meretricious." Waldemar Januszczak; A Dirty Old Man And the Sea?; The Sunday Times (London, UK); Jul 11, 2010. Explore "meretricious" in the Visual Thesaurus. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers. Cannibalism is moral in a cannibal country. -Samuel Butler, writer (1835-1902)

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