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May 19, 2016
This week’s theme
Miscellaneous words

This week’s words
factious
repudiate
blandishment
ignominious
fractious

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with Anu Garg

ignominious

PRONUNCIATION:
(ig-nuh-MIN-ee-uhs)

MEANING:
adjective: Deserving or causing disgrace or shame.

ETYMOLOGY:
Via French, from Latin ignominia, from ig- (not) + nomen (name). Ultimately from the Indo-European root no-men- (name) which also gave us name, anonymous, noun, synonym, eponym, renown, nominate, misnomer, and moniker. Earliest documented use: 1530.

USAGE:
“Bureaucratic, hand-typed, without puffery or blandishment, they may be the most ignominious documents in the Jews’ 4,000-year history. They are four sheets of paper dated Sep 15, 1935, signed by Adolf Hitler, that legally excluded Jews from German life and set the groundwork for exterminating them from Europe.”
Daniel B. Wood; Some Dark Words of History Come to Light; The Christian Science Monitor (Boston, Massachusetts); Jul 1, 1999.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Humankind is made up of two sexes, women and men. Is it possible for humankind to grow by the improvement of only one part while the other part is ignored? -Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder and the first president of Turkey (19 May 1881-1938)

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