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Oct 21, 2013
This week's theme
Miscellaneous words

This week's words
tumid
primogeniture
recidivism
mien
autochthonous

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

I love words. It's something I gave up my career in software for. Every morning when I wake up I can't wait to begin exploring words and writing about them. I've been doing that for nearly 20 years and wouldn't want to do anything else.

That said, there are times when I feel I have to be ready to feed this beast -- A.Word.A.Day -- week after week after week. It opens its hungry maw every Monday and I'd better be ready with another serving of juicy, delicious words.

I do my best to come up with new recipes, new arrangements, new flavors. There are times, however, when I just have to reach into my grab-bag of loose words and offer them while I think of a new topic. It's one of those weeks.

Enjoy this medley of words while I get back to the word lab, putting finishing touches to next week's material.

tumid

PRONUNCIATION:
(TOO-mid, TYOO-)

MEANING:
adjective:
1. Swollen.
2. Bulging.
3. Pompous, bombastic.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin tumere (to swell). Earliest documented use: 1541.

USAGE:
"Her tumid eyes filled with tears and she began to cry."
Joseph Heller; Catch-22; Simon & Schuster; 1961.

"Think of all the suits in marketing, communications, and public relations who clog up the institutional arteries with their tumid prose and clich�d sound bites."
Blaise Cronin; Bloomington Days; AuthorHouse; 2012.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Hundreds of hysterical persons must confuse these phenomena with messages from the beyond and take their glory to the bishop rather than the eye doctor. -James Thurber, writer and cartoonist (1894-1961)

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