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Mar 26, 2019
This week’s themePeople who became verbs This week’s words grandisonize lynch galvanize mesmerize crusoe 
A plaque memorializing the lynching of Levi Harrington
Photo: DavidMCEddy/Wikimedia See also: Lynching in America
A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garglynch
PRONUNCIATION:
(linch)
MEANING:
verb tr.:
To punish (typically, killing by hanging) for an alleged crime, without
a legal trial.
ETYMOLOGY:
After Captain William Lynch (1742-1820) of Pittsylvania, Virginia, who
was the head of a vigilante group. Some have attributed the term to
Charles Lynch (1736-1796), a Virginia magistrate. Earliest documented
use: 1836.
USAGE:
“In August a mob there [in Shashamane, Ethiopia] lynched a man wrongly
suspected of carrying a bomb.” A Colourful Revolution; The Economist (London, UK); Dec 8, 2018. See more usage examples of lynch in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. -Robert Frost, poet (26 Mar
1874-1963)
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