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cavil: msg#00019culture.language.word-of-the-day
***************************************************************** Why settle for one word of the day? Check out all the hot new words by subscribing to Merriam-Webster Unabridged. http://www.merriam-websterunabridged.com ***************************************************************** The Word of the Day for May 20 is: cavil \KAV-il\ verb *1 intransitive sense : to raise trivial and frivolous objection 2 transitive sense : to raise trivial objections to Example sentence: It may seem petty to cavil at minor flaws given the film's unquestionable excellence as a whole, but the ending did seem to lack credibility. Did you know? "You must be joking!" That's just one of the things you might be tempted to exclaim if you found yourself quarreling with a caviler -- and you'd be right, etymologically speaking at least. "Cavil" derives from the Latin verb "cavillari," meaning "to jest" or "to raise silly objections," which in turn derives from the Latin noun "cavilla," meaning "raillery." It has been used in English to denote petty quibbling since at least 1542, when Nicholas Udall used it in his translation of Erasmus' _Apophthegms_: "For when the Sophistes fell to cauillyng ... and triflyng, lytle by lytle, their estimacion decayed." *Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence. |
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