abrogate

*****************************************************************
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 September 11 is:

abrogate   \AB-ruh-gayt\   verb
   *1 : to abolish by authoritative action : annul 
     2 : to treat as nonexistent 

Example sentence:
     An old law that abrogated the right of liquor store owners 
to sell alcohol on Sundays was recently struck from the books.

Did you know?
     If you can't simply wish something out of existence, the 
next best thing might be to "propose it away." That's sort of 
what "abrogate" lets you do, at least etymologically speaking. 
It comes from the Latin root "rogare," which means "to propose a 
law," and "ab-," meaning "from" or "away." But we won't propose 
that you try to get away from the fact that "rogare" is also an 
ancestor in the family tree of "prerogative" and "interrogate." 
"Abrogate" first appeared in English as a verb in the 16th 
century, but was preceded by an adjective sense meaning 
"annulled" or "cancelled" which is now obsolete. 

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.