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Sep 17, 2012
This week's theme
Random words

This week's words
incommodious
mendacity
marmoreal
tenuous
hiemal

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

It's nice to see more and more of the world's information getting organized -- sorted, indexed, and cataloged -- making it easy to find. We now know more of what is where and how to access it.

But there's something to be said about serendipity. Sometimes there's no substitute for walking into a random aisle in a library and perusing books. Sometimes getting lost results in finding what you may need.

Recognizing this, there are websites to suggest a website at random for you. And we have a way for you to see a word at random from AWAD archives, and so on.

In that spirit, this week's words have been selected randomly, by getting lost in the dictionary and landing on a word.

incommodious

PRONUNCIATION:
(in-kuh-MOH-dee-uhs)

MEANING:
adjective: Inconvenient or uncomfortable.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin commodus (convenient), from com- (with) + modus (mode, measure). Ultimately from the Indo-European root med- (to take appropriate measures), which is also the source of medicine, modern, modify, modest, modulate, discommode and incommode. Earliest documented use: 1551.

USAGE:
"An incommodious little wooden house is where this deaf teacher lived." Tamara Eidelman; Kaluga's Rocket Scientist; Russian Life; (Montpelier, Vermont); Sep/Oct 2007.

See more usage examples of incommodious in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The tragedy in the lives of most of us is that we go through life walking down a high-walled lane with people of our own kind, the same economic situation, the same national background and education and religious outlook. And beyond those walls, all humanity lies, unknown and unseen, and untouched by our restricted and impoverished lives. -Florence Luscomb, architect and suffragist (1887-1985)

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