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This week's theme A random walk through the dictionary This week's words diaphanous lucubrate acarpous coetaneous pellucid Today's word in Visual Thesaurus AWAD is reader-supported This is a reader-supported publication. Here's how you can make a contribution Discuss Feedback RSS/XML A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg lucubrate PRONUNCIATION: (LOO-kyoo-brayt) MEANING: verb intr.: To work (such as study, write, discourse) laboriously or learnedly. ETYMOLOGY: Here's a word that literally encapsulates the idiom "to burn the midnight oil". It's derived from Latin lucubrare (to work by lamplight), from lucere (to shine). Ultimately from the Indo-European root leuk- (light) that's resulted in other words such as lunar, lunatic, light, lightning, lucid, illuminate, illustrate, translucent, lux, and lynx. USAGE: "So MPs have voted to lucubrate less. To lucubrate fewer? To sit for fewer midnight hours. To work less antisocial hours. To have less/fewer late nights." Philip Howard; Less is More Prevalent; The Times (London, UK); Nov 1, 2002. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: They are happy men whose natures sort with their vocations. -Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626)

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