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Aug 1, 2025
This week’s themeMisc words This week’s words vicissitude trenchant untrammeled pillory temerity ![]() ![]()
The Fall of Icarus (1635-1637)
Art: Jacob Peter Gowy, after Peter Paul Rubens
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with Anu Gargtemerity
PRONUNCIATION:
MEANING:
noun: Excessive or reckless boldness.
ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin temere (blindly, rashly). Ultimately from the Indo-European
root temh-es- (darkness), which also gave us Sanskrit tamas (darkness),
German Dämmerung (twilight), and gotterdammerung.
Earliest documented use: 1475. The adjectival form is temerarious.
USAGE:
“I, and others like me, now find ourselves regularly being pilloried
for having the temerity to express an opinion about things.” Karl du Fresne; Male, Pale, But Not Stale; Dominion Post (Wellington, New Zealand); May 31, 2018. See more usage examples of temerity in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event --
in the living act, the undoubted deed -- there, some unknown but still
reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the
unreasoning mask. -Herman Melville, novelist and poet (1 Aug 1819-1891)
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