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Oct 22, 2025
This week’s theme
Adjectives

This week’s words
acerbic
polemical
orectic

orectic
Children Eating Grapes and a Melon, (1645-1650)
Art: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

orectic

PRONUNCIATION:
(o-REK-tik)

MEANING:
adjective: Relating to appetite or desire.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin orecticus (stimulating appetite), from Greek orektikos, from oregein (to desire). Earliest documented use: 1671.

NOTES:
An appetite isn’t just for food. The same word that describes hunger of the body can describe hunger of the mind, the heart, or the soul. Orectic energy is what propels artists, lovers, and revolutionaries alike.

USAGE:
“[Father Duncannon] served the institutional needs of the tiny movement with most of his orectic energy that remained from artistic and erotic engagement.”
Jonathan Bayliss; Gloucesterbook; Protean Press; 1992.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way. -Doris Lessing, novelist, poet, playwright, Nobel laureate (22 Oct 1919-2013)

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