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Mar 13, 2024
This week’s theme
Words entering English in the last 30 years

This week’s words
dogfood
dot-connect
crowdfund
neurodivergence
deepfake

crowdfund
Illustration: Anu Garg + AI
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A.Word.A.Day
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crowdfund

PRONUNCIATION:
(KRAUD-fuhnd)

MEANING:
verb tr.: To fund a project by raising money from a large number of people, mostly strangers and usually via the Internet.

ETYMOLOGY:
From crowd, from cruden (to press, to hurry) + fund, from Latin fundus (bottom, estate). Earliest documented use: 2008. See also, crowdsource.

USAGE:
“The video went viral, and Slat soon crowdfunded two million dollars from donors in a hundred and sixty countries.”
Carolyn Kormann; The Widening Gyre; The New Yorker; Feb 4, 2019.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life. -Giorgos Seferis, writer, diplomat, Nobel laureate (13 Mar 1900-1971)

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