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abnegate: msg#00006culture.language.word-of-the-day
***************************************************************** It's May! Or is it "might"? Settle the dispute with our Concise Dictionary of English Usage. http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/book.pl?conusg.htm&6 ***************************************************************** The Word of the Day for May 7 is: abnegate \AB-nih-gayt\ verb 1 : deny, renounce *2 : surrender, relinquish Example sentence: Sylvia chose to abnegate the privileges of her wealthy upbringing, seeking instead a simple life helping those less fortunate than herself. Did you know? There's no denying that the Latin root "negare" has given English some useful verbs. That verb, which means "to deny," was the ultimate source of the noun "abnegation," a synonym of "denial" that began appearing in English manuscripts in the 14th century. By the 17th century, people had concluded that if there was a noun "abnegation," there ought to be a related verb "abnegate," and so they created one by a process called "back-formation" (that's the process of trimming a suffix or prefix off a long word to make a shorter one). But "abnegate" and "abnegation" are not the only English offspring of "negare." That root is also an ancestor of other nay-saying terms such as "deny," "negate," and "renegade." |
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