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Jan 24, 2017
This week’s theme
Miscellaneous words

This week’s words
quotidian
effluvium
ineffable
visage
inexorable

“Words are the small change of thought.” ~Jules Renard
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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

effluvium

PRONUNCIATION:
(i-FLOO-vee-uhm)

MEANING:
noun: An unpleasant discharge, for example, fumes, vapors, or gases from waste or decaying matter.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin effluere (to flow out), from ex- (out) + fluere (to flow). Ultimately from the Indo-European root bhleu- (to swell or overflow), from which flow words such as affluent, influence, influenza, fluctuate, fluent, fluid, fluoride, flush, flux, reflux, and superfluous. profluent, mellifluous, fluvial, affluenza, and affluential. Earliest documented use: 1646.

USAGE:
“His email inbox was full of quotidian effluvia: hospital safety bulletins, university staff postings, calls for papers, drug company propaganda.”
W.D. Clarke; White Mythology: Two Novellas; All That Is Solid Press; 2016.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. -Edith Wharton, novelist (24 Jan 1861-1937)

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