A.Word.A.Day --malcontent

A.Word.A.Day

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Nov 14, 2022

This week’s theme
Words for people

This week’s words
malcontent
fanboy
thaumaturge
temporizer
casuist

Via dei Malcontenti, Florence, Italy

Photo: Aldo Cavini Benedetti

Previous week’s theme
Postpositives

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

Do you see in black and white, good or bad, cool or uncool? Describe others as saintly or evil? Humans actually come in many shades in between. This week we’ll introduce you to five colorful words to describe them.

malcontent

PRONUNCIATION:

(MAL-kuhn-tent, mal-kuhn-TENT)

MEANING:

noun: One who is chronically dissatisfied.
adjective: Chronically dissatisfied, complaining, rebellious, etc.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin mal- (badly) + contentus (satisfied), from continere (to contain), from con- (with) + tenere (to hold). Earliest documented use: 1574.

USAGE:

“I had met for hours alone with the malcontents and tried to both listen to their ideas and to explain the other side of the issues to them. It had not worked.”
Mallory James; Nowhere Man; iUniverse; 2018.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love. -Claude Monet, painter (14 Nov 1840-1926)

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