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Jun 9, 2004
This week's theme
Verbs

This week's words
amerce
deracinate
wamble
embrangle
obtund

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

wamble

Pronunciation RealAudio

(WOM-buhl) verb intr.

1. To move unsteadily; to totter, waver, roll, etc.
2. To feel nausea.
3. (Of a stomach) To rumble or growl.

noun

1. An unsteady motion.
2. A feeling of nausea.

[From Middle English wamelen (to feel nausea). Ultimately from Indo-European root wem- (to vomit) that's also the source of words such as vomit and emetic (something that induces vomiting).]

"In her (Janice Daugharty's) hands, dogs don't just run and bark at moving wagons. Instead, 'rawboned and hollow, the ... heart-faced curs came on, yipping at the spinning wagon wheels and wambling between the legs of the horses."
Hal Jacobs; Reading the South: New fiction; The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Georgia); May 27, 2004

"But then add the black warrior: the focus settles on the black guy, the theme blurs, the angle grows acute, the last reel resolution wambles."
Thomas Cripps; Frederick Douglass: The Absent Presence in Glory; The Massachusetts Review (Amherst); Spring 1995.

X-Bonus

Everyone wishes to have truth on his side, but not everyone wishes to be on the side of truth. -Richard Whately, philosopher, reformer, theologian, economist (1787-1863)

What they say

“Garg works in the great tradition of Wilfred Funk and Norman Lewis... Garg, however, is more fun.”

Minneapolis Star Tribune


More articles

Anu Garg on words

“Overall, the universe’s apostrophe store stays in balance. It seems our linguistic world was intelligently designed -- for every gratuitous apostrophe there’s an instance where it’s omitted.”

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