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Apr 6, 2010
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Miscellaneous words

This week's words
desideratum
limen
obdurate
quiescence
chicanery
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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

limen

PRONUNCIATION:
(LY-muhn)

MEANING:
noun: A threshold of response: point at which a stimulus is of sufficient intensity to generate a response.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin limen (threshold).

USAGE:
"Such to the dead might appear the world of living -- charged with information, with meaning, yet somehow always just, terribly, beyond that fateful limen where any lamp of comprehension might beam forth."
Thomas Pynchon; Against the Day; Penguin Press; 2006.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five. -Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer (1934-1996)

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