This week’s theme
Toponyms

This week’s words
Smithfield bargain
kryptonite
Punic
byzantinize

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(biz-uhn-TEE-nyz, BIZ-uhn-tee-nyz)

MEANING:

verb tr.: To make complex, elaborate, or intricate.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Byzantium, an ancient Greek city, modern-day Istanbul. Earliest documented use: 1855.

NOTES:

The figurative sense comes from the Byzantine Empire, famous for elaborate art, onion-layered bureaucracy, and palace intrigues. To Byzantinize is to take something simple and embroider it until it’s as tangled as a modern tax code.

USAGE:

“You had a feeling, implicit in the ritualistic, byzantinized language which was spoken at these meetings, that there were people all over the world who thought as you did.”
Clancy Sigal; Going Away; Houghton Mifflin; 1962.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: