This week’s theme
Words with initial silent letters

This week’s words
knavery
wroth
knar
wrick
gnomic

This week’s comments
AWADmail 732

Next week’s theme
Miscellaneous words

---

A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(NO-mik)

MEANING:

adjective:
1. Relating to a gnome (an aphorism or a pithy saying).
2. Puzzling, ambiguous, or incomprehensible yet seemingly profound.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Greek gnome (judgment, opinion), from gignoskein (to know). Ultimately from the Indo-European root gno- (to know), which also gave us knowledge, prognosis, ignore, narrate, normal, and gnomon. Earliest documented use: 1815.

USAGE:

“Others believed that George arrived every year with a single guiding business idea. ‘Information cannot be taxed’ or ‘Improbability is the river in which we fish’ or some other gnomic pronouncement. One year, the rumors ran, George uttered a single word: ‘China’.”
Stephen Marche; The Hunger of the Wolf; Simon & Schuster; 2015.

“Charles was finding the conversation a little gnomic. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t quite get what you mean.’”
Simon Brett; The Cinderella Killer; Severn House; 2015.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: