A.Word.A.Day --verbicide

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Today's Word

verbicide

PRONUNCIATION:

(VUHR-buh-syd)

MEANING:

noun:
1. The deliberate distortion or destruction of the meaning of a word.
2. A person who deliberately distorts the meaning of a word.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin verbum (word) + -cide (killing). Earliest documented use: 1826.

NOTES:

Verbicide thrives in political slogans, press releases, and corporate memos, where words like freedom, choice, reform, and family are repeatedly assaulted until they confess to meanings they never had. Also see, Words from 1984 that are now a part of the language.

USAGE:

“So Olbreht gets away with verbicide; there are also mistakes of grammar I will spare you.”
John Simon; Balkan Dreams; The Weekly Standard (Washington, DC); Jun 27, 2011.

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

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

That community is already in the process of dissolution where each man begins to eye his neighbor as a possible enemy, where nonconformity with the accepted creed, political as well as religious, is a mark of disaffection; where denunciation, without specification or backing, takes the place of evidence; where orthodoxy chokes freedom of dissent; where faith in the eventual supremacy of reason has become so timid that we dare not enter our convictions in the open lists, to win or lose. -Learned Hand, jurist (27 Jan 1872-1961)

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