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This week's theme Contranyms, or words with an opposite set of meanings. This week's words cleave continuance asperse copemate quiddity Mon automne monotone? Tired of, like, everything? Get the book DORD and wake up to the wonder of "ennui". Discuss Feedback RSS/XML A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg copemate, also copesmate PRONUNCIATION: (KOP-mayt) MEANING: noun: 1. An associate or friend. 2. An opponent or adversary. ETYMOLOGY: From French couper (to cut), from Latin colpus (blow), from Greek kolaphos (blow with the fist) + mate (fellow). USAGE: "I let go of [the gown's] gaping back long enough to turn around, grin and give a big OK sign to Ms. Harper's Bazaar, our copemate, our friend." Dorothy Fredericks; Breezy is Fashionable; The Seattle Times; Aug 25, 1991. "Weigh gentlemen, and consider, whether my affirmations, back'd with reason, may hold balance against the bare denials of ... my copesmate." John Milton; Colasterion; 1645. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: Of all plagues with which mankind is cursed, ecclesiastic tyranny's the worst. -Daniel Defoe, novelist and journalist (1659?-1731)

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