The word for today is… volition (noun): 1 : the power of choosing or determining : will 2 : an act of making a choice or decision Source : Merriam -Webster Etymology :When you do something of your own volition, you do it voluntarily, which makes sense—both volition and voluntary ultimately come from
righttolife.org.uk Researchers have captured the facial expressions of unborn babies tasting food for the first time, finding that they smile when they taste carrot and grimace when they taste kale. Published in the journal Psychological Science, scientists from the Durham University asked 100 pregnant women to swallow capsules
The word for today is… exorbitant (adjective): 1 : not coming within the scope of the law 2 : exceeding the customary or appropriate limits in intensity, quality, amount, or size Source : Merriam -Webster Etymology :The first use of “exorbitant” in English was “wandering or deviating from the normal or ordinary course.
The word for today is… cloying (noun): : disgusting or distasteful by reason of excess, also excessively sweet or sentimental Source : Merriam -Webster Etymology :Cloying comes from the verb cloy, which had among its earliest uses the meaning (to quote the Oxford English Dictionary) “to render [a gun] useless by driving
Claire Corbett University of Technology Sydney Writers can’t always be trusted when they talk about the power and importance of story. We have a vested interest and can get sentimental, promoting the immense power of story, of narrative, as inherently benign. Even when a writer is famously sceptical of
Julie Ponesse brownstone.org Dr. Julie Ponesse is a professor of ethics who has taught at Ontario’s Huron University College for 20 years. She was placed on leave and banned from accessing her campus due to the vaccine mandate. She presented at the The Faith and Democracy Series on
The word for today is… interlocutor (noun): 1 : one who takes part in dialogue or conversation 2 : a man in the middle of the line in a minstrel show who questions the end men and acts as leader Source : Merriam -Webster Etymology :It may not necessarily be grandiloquence to use
Jay L. Zagorsky Boston University Jay L. Zagorsky teaches at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. From 1988 to the present his teaching has spanned a wide range of levels from senior executives taking intensive classes to high school students encountering economic theories for the first time. The latest
The word for today is… writhe (verb): 1a : to twist into coils or folds b : to twist so as to distort : wrench c : to twist (the body or a bodily part) in pain 2 : intertwine Source : Merriam -Webster Etymology :Writhe wound its way to us from the Old English verb
The word for today is… bespoke (adjective): 1a : custom-made b : dealing in or producing custom-made articles 2 dialect : engaged Source : Merriam -Webster Etymology :In the English language of yore, the verb bespeak had various meanings, including “to speak,” “to accuse,” and “to complain.” In the 16th century, bespeak acquired another
The word for today is… litotes (noun): : understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of the contrary (as in “not a bad singer” or “not unhappy”) Source : Merriam -Webster Etymology :Even if you’ve never heard the word litotes, chances are you’ve encountered this figure of
Matthew Robert Anderson Concordia University Everyone knows the story of Scrooge, a man so miserly his name has become synonymous with penny-pinching meanness. Scrooge’s conversion from miser to benefactor has been told and retold since Charles Dickens first wrote A Christmas Carol in the fall and winter of 1843.
Sally O’Reilly The Open University Our fascination with ghostly tales around Christmas time goes back thousands of years and is rooted in ancient celebrations of the winter solstice. In the depths of winter, pagan traditions included a belief in a ghostly procession across the sky, known as the Wild
The word for today is… hyperbole (noun): : extravagant exaggeration Source : Merriam -Webster Etymology :In the 5th century B.C. there was a rabble-rousing Athenian politician named Hyperbolus. Since Hyperbolus is known to history as a demagogue, i.e. “a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and
Joe Perry Georgia State University In 1921, in a Munich beer hall, newly appointed Nazi party leader Adolf Hitler gave a Christmas speech to an excited crowd. According to undercover police observers, 4,000 supporters cheered when Hitler condemned “the cowardly Jews for breaking the world-liberator on the cross” and
Joan Fitzpatrick Loughborough University Charles Dickens popularised the traditional, English Christmas in 1843 in his novel A Christmas Carol, when Bob Cratchit and his family sit down on Christmas Day to eat a dinner of goose with mashed potatoes and apple sauce accompanied by sage and onion stuffing and followed
