This week’s theme
Misc words

This week’s words
vicissitude
trenchant
untrammeled
pillory
temerity

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(PIL-uh-ree)

MEANING:

verb tr.: To subject to severe public criticism or ridicule.
noun: A device used in the past to publicly punish offenders by locking their head and hands in place.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Old French pilori, probably from Latin pila (pillar). Earliest documented use: 1330.

NOTES:

Being trapped in the pillory left a person defenseless to passersby’s jeers. And overripe tomatoes. The crime could be anything from being guilty of perjury to just bad poetry. The pillory is now history, but its spirit lives on in online comments and certain cable news panels. See also: nithing.

USAGE:

“Wen Jiabao, China’s premier, told a less-than-ebullient audience in Davos -- once a Mecca to the ideas of untrammelled capitalism -- about the west’s ‘unsustainable model of development characterised by prolonged low savings and high consumption’. He pilloried western banks, chunks of whose near-worthless stock are now owned by Chinese state institutions.”
Ralph Atkins & David Pilling; A Quest for Other Ways; Financial Times (London, UK); Mar 16, 2009.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: