A.Word.A.Day --ablute

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Today's Word

ablute

PRONUNCIATION:

(uh-BLOOT)

MEANING:

verb tr., intr.: To bathe or to wash a part of the body.

ETYMOLOGY:

Back-formation from ablution, from Latin abluere (to wash off), from ab- (away, off) and lavere (to wash). Earliest documented use: 1703.

USAGE:

“Some secondary schools have installed cameras in student toilet blocks in order to discourage vaping. This seems like a pretty drastic step and one that raises serious issues as to the right to ablute in private.”
Susan Hornsby-Geluk; Cameras in Toilets Risk Impinging the Right to Ablute in Private; The Post (Wellington, New Zealand); Oct 18, 2023.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door! -Emma Lazarus, poet and playwright (22 Jul 1849-1887) [from a poem written to raise funds for building the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty]

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