This week’s theme
Whose what?

This week’s words
cat's meow
patriarch's age
rake's progress


Wordsmith Games

🧩	Jigsaw Riddle A Piece of the Puzzle
🌍	Langitude Trace duffel home

A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(rakes PROG-res)

MEANING:

noun: A steady decline, especially one brought on by dissipation, folly, or vice.

ETYMOLOGY:

After A Rake’s Progress, a series of paintings and engravings by William Hogarth, depicting the decline of a spendthrift. Earliest documented use: 1833.

NOTES:

The painter and engraver William Hogarth made a series of eight paintings and engravings titled A Rake’s Progress (c. 1733-35). The series depicts the decline of Tom Rakewell, the son of a prosperous merchant, who wastes his money on luxuries, gambling, and prostitution, and ends up in a debtors’ prison, and finally in Bedlam, a hospital for the insane.

One might say his fortune went from inheritance to in-here-a-dunce. Progress, in this case, is strictly downhill.

USAGE:

“People have gone from using gold or silver coins through paper notes and plastic cards to the modern practice of ‘quantitative easing’ (QE). To some on the Republican right in America, this evolution is a rake’s progress, in which QE is a debasement of the currency leading to hyperinflation and economic ruin.”
The Origins of Money; The Economist (London, UK); Feb 14, 2015.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: