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Jul 26, 2019
This week’s theme
Toponyms

This week’s words
solecism
Manchurian candidate
Dunkirk
Siberia
ultima Thule

Thule stamp
A 1935 stamp of Greenland
Image: Wikimedia

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

ultima Thule

PRONUNCIATION:
(UL-tuh-muh THOO-lee)

MEANING:
noun:
1. The northernmost part of the world believed habitable by the ancients.
2. A distant or remote goal or place.
3. The farthest point.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin ultima (farthest) + Thule, a place believed by ancient people to be the northernmost, variously identified as Iceland, Norway, Greenland, or Shetland Islands. Earliest documented use: 1771.

USAGE:
“On what’s known as the shy-bold continuum of human behaviour, Unst stands out as an ultima Thule of shyness.”
Ian Jack; We Used to Think Shyness Was Refined. That Was Before Social Media; The Guardian (London, UK); Sep 17, 2016.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
All great truths begin as blasphemies. -George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (26 Jul 1856-1950)

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