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May 16, 2025
This week’s theme
Interesting usage examples

This week’s words
renunciatory
winsome
susurrant
ruderal
bereft

bereft
Bereft, 1893

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

bereft

PRONUNCIATION:
(bi-REFT)

MEANING:
adjective: Deprived of or lacking.

ETYMOLOGY:
Past participle of bereave (to deprive), from Old English bereafian (to rob someone of something). Earliest documented use: 1531.

USAGE:
“Too many voters today are easily conned, deeply biased, impervious to fact, and bereft of survival instincts. Contrary to myth, frogs leap out of heating pots. Stampeding cattle stop at a cliff edge. Lemmings don’t really commit mass suicide. We’ll find out about Americans in 2024.”
Mort Rosenblum; Deadly Hot Air; The Mort Report; Feb 10, 2023.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
As a general truth, communities prosper and flourish, or droop and decline, in just the degree that they practise or neglect to practise the primary duties of justice and humanity. -William Henry Seward, Secretary of State, Governor, and Senator (16 May 1801-1872)

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