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Sep 17, 2004

This week's theme
Archaic words

This week's words
trow
verily
mayhap
howbeit
levin

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Next week’s theme
Words borrowed from other languages

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levin

[From Middle English levene. Ultimately from Indo-European root leuk- (light) that's resulted in other words such as lunar, lunatic, light, lightning, lucid, illuminate, illustrate, translucent, lux, and lynx.]

"Broad and frequent through the night
Flash'd the sheets of levin-light;"
Walter Scott; The Dance of Death; 1815.

"See! from its summit the lurid levin
Flashes downward without warning,
As Lucifer, son of the morning,
Fell from the battlements of heaven!"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; At Sea; 1851.

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