This week’s theme
Eponyms

This week’s words
fabian
stent
hymeneal
euhemerism
roland

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(hy-muh-NEE-uhl)

MEANING:

adjective: Relating to a wedding or marriage.
noun: A wedding song or poem.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Hymen, the god of marriage in Greek mythology. Earliest documented use: 1602.

USAGE:

“There must be no love interest in the story. ... The business in hand is to bring a criminal to the bar of justice, not to bring a lovelorn couple to the hymeneal altar.”
S.S. Van Dine; Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories; American Magazine; Sep 1928.

“In those uncivilised days, the Marriage Act had not been passed, and there was no convenient hymeneal registrar in England to change a vagabond runaway couple into a respectable man and wife at a moment’s notice.”
Wilkie Collins; A Rogue’s Life; Richard Bentley; 1879.

See more usage examples of hymeneal in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: