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Nov 27, 2009
This week's theme
Uncommon adverbs

This week's words
doggo
cap-a-pie
videlicet
apropos
scienter

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Terms from French

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

scienter

PRONUNCIATION:
(sy-EN-tuhr)

MEANING:
adverb: Deliberately; knowingly.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin scienter (knowingly), from scire (to know; to separate one thing from another). Ultimately from the Indo-European root skei- (to cut or split) that also gave us schism, ski, shin, science, conscience, and nice.

NOTES:
In law, scienter is an important concept. Scienter must be shown, i.e. a person was aware -- for example, the currency note he was passing was counterfeit -- to prove the guilt. The word is often used as a noun.

USAGE:
"The judge said that the complaint, if true, would show BankAtlantic's executives acted with scienter -- the intent or knowledge of wrongdoing that's the key to a plaintiff's argument in a class action complaint."
Brian Bandell; Judge Lets Class Action Suit Proceed Against BankAtlantic Bancorp; South Florida Business Journal; May 22, 2009.

See more usage examples of scienter in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature. -George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)

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