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Feb 23, 2016
This week’s theme
Miscellaneous words

This week’s words
piacular
demotic
parsimony
gaucherie
valence

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with Anu Garg

demotic

PRONUNCIATION:
(di-MOT-ik)

MEANING:
adjective: Relating to common people; popular.
noun: Modern Greek.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Greek demos (people). Earliest documented use: 1782.

USAGE:
“I’ve often found myself wondering what Christopher Hitchens would say about this or that event in the news. What I wouldn’t give to read him on ... the darkly demotic presidential campaign of Donald Trump.”
Damon Linker; Pleasures of Dispute; The New York Times; Jan 8, 2016.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Leaving home in a sense involves a kind of second birth in which we give birth to ourselves. -Robert Neelly Bellah, sociologist and author (23 Feb 1927-2013)

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