A.Word.A.Day--ubiety

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Jul 8, 2002

This week's theme
Yours to discover

This week's words
ubiety
irade
ambit
estival
lanate

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A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

Don your sherlockian hats, put on the gumshoes, and sharpen your private eyes. It's time for some word sleuthing. Wordsmith needs a few good word detectives to save the day (or week). I had jotted down the five words for this week in my notebook, but I can't remember what was common among them. Can you see a pattern in these seemingly random words? Is there a theme that you can identify? If you think you have the answer, send it to words@wordsmith.org by Jul 12, 2002.

ubiety

(yoo-BYE-i-tee)

noun: The condition of existing in a particular location.

[From Latin ubi (where) + -ety, a variant of ity.]

Here's a more familiar word with the same root: ubiquity, the state of being everywhere.

"Ubiety suffuses Milosz's work, though he says that `whether I wanted this to happen or not, the landscapes of California have merged with the landscapes of Lithuania.'"
David Kipen; ABCs of Milosz -- A Life in Letters; The San Francisco Chronicle: Mar 21, 2001.

"And so every anecdote in Northern Ireland has to come accompanied by its refutation. One person will tell a story pointing up the ubiety of the sectarian divide, and how both groups can instantly identify one another and then someone else will chime up and say: but what about so-and-so."
Will Self; A Little Cottage Industry Business is Thriving in Northern Ireland; The Guardian (London, UK); Jul 10, 1994.

X-Bonus

Nature does nothing uselessly. -Aristotle (384-322 BCE)

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