A.Word.A.Day --equivocacy

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Today's Word

equivocacy

PRONUNCIATION:

(i-KWIV-uh-kuh-see)

MEANING:

noun: The quality of being deliberately ambiguous or vague.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin aequi-/equi- (equal) + vocare (to call), from vox (voice). Earliest documented use: 1646.

USAGE:

“The smuggler Han Solo -- whose did-he-or-didn’t-he equivocacy has perplexed director George Lucas for decades.”
Michael Idato; A Cultural Force, Awakened; The Age (Melbourne, Australia); Nov 30, 2019.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure." -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (12 Sep 1880-1956)

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