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Aug 3, 2022
This week’s theme
Verbs

This week’s words
obtrude
mundify
discerp
elute
micrify

discerp
Illustration: Karen Folsom #kgfolsart

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

discerp

PRONUNCIATION:
(di-SUHRP)

MEANING:
verb tr.: To tear off or to rip into pieces.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin discerpere (to tear to pieces), from dis- (apart) + carpere (to pick, pluck). Earliest documented use: 1483.

USAGE:
“Trace shook her head and inhaled through o’d lips, imagining a mother bear or cougar finding, catching, and killing the fawn, discerping it to share with April-born cubs or kits.”
Scott Elliott; Temple Grove; University of Washington Press; 2013.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give. -P.D. James (Phyllis Dorothy James), novelist (3 Aug 1920-2014)

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