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Feb 22, 2011
This week's theme
Words with unusual plurals

This week's words
stele
eidos
fomes
lacuna
miasma

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

eidos

PRONUNCIATION:
(EYE-dos, AY-)
plural eide (EYE-dee, AY-day)

MEANING:
noun: The formal sum of a culture, its intellectual character, ideas, etc.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Greek eidos (form, idea), ultimately from the Indo-European root weid- (to see), which is the source of words such as wise, view, supervise, wit, and eidetic. Earliest recorded use: 1936.

USAGE:
"Picture, if you will, honey, the eidos of repulsive: plaid upholstered chairs, with ruffled skirts, all hideously brown and yellow."
Christopher Coe; Such Times; Penguin Books; 1994.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. -Edmund Burke, statesman and writer (1729-1797)

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