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This week's theme Uncommon adverbs This week's words doggo cap-a-pie videlicet apropos scienter Next week's theme Terms from French This week's comments AWADmail 387 Make a gift that keeps on giving, all year long: A gift subscription of AWAD or give the gift of books Discuss Feedback RSS/XML A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg scienter PRONUNCIATION: (sy-EN-tuhr) MEANING: adverb: Deliberately; knowingly. ETYMOLOGY: From Latin scienter (knowingly), from scire (to know; to separate one thing from another). Ultimately from the Indo-European root skei- (to cut or split) that also gave us schism, ski, shin, science, conscience, and nice. NOTES: In law, scienter is an important concept. Scienter must be shown, i.e. a person was aware -- for example, the currency note he was passing was counterfeit -- to prove the guilt. The word is often used as a noun. USAGE: "The judge said that the complaint, if true, would show BankAtlantic's executives acted with scienter -- the intent or knowledge of wrongdoing that's the key to a plaintiff's argument in a class action complaint." Brian Bandell; Judge Lets Class Action Suit Proceed Against BankAtlantic Bancorp; South Florida Business Journal; May 22, 2009. Explore "scienter" in the Visual Thesaurus. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature. -George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)

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