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urbane: msg#00029culture.language.word-of-the-day
***************************************************************** Discover the people and events that made history ON THIS DAY. Sign up for the free daily newsletter from Britannica. http://register.britannica.com/mailinglist ***************************************************************** The Word of the Day for August 30 is: urbane \er-BAYN\ adjective : notably polite or polished in manner Example sentence: Mr. Murray is the epitome of an urbane gentleman: meticulously groomed, faultlessly polite, always poised and gracious in every situation. Did you know? City slickers and country folk have long debated whether life is better on the town or in the wide open spaces, and "urbane" is a term that springs from the throes of that debate. The word traces back to the Latin "urbs," meaning "city," and in its earliest English uses in the 17th century "urbane" was synonymous with its close relative "urban" (which was first recorded in English only a few years earlier). "Urbane" developed its modern sense of savoir faire from the belief (no doubt fostered by city dwellers) that life in the city was much more suave and polished than life in the country. |
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