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Oct 16, 2024
This week’s theme
Usage examples that are food for thought

This week’s words
parturition
avarice
panacea

panacea
Illustration: Anu Garg + AI

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

panacea

PRONUNCIATION:
(pan-uh-SEE-uh)

MEANING:
noun: A remedy for all difficulties or diseases; a universal cure.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin panacea, from Greek panakeia, from panakes (all-healing), from pan (all) + akos (cure). In Greek mythology, Panacea was the goddess of universal remedy. Earliest documented use: 1548.

USAGE:
“The greatest analgesic, soporific, stimulant, tranquilizer, narcotic, and to some extent even antibiotic -- in short, the closest thing to a genuine panacea -- known to medical science is work.”
Thomas Szasz; The Second Sin; Anchor Press; 1973.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. -Oscar Wilde, writer (16 Oct 1854-1900)

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