egregious

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The Word of the Day for January 27 is: 

egregious   \ih-GREE-juss\   adjective
     : conspicuous; especially : conspicuously bad 

Example sentence:
     The armchair commentators at the office spent their coffee 
break grousing about the egregious errors of judgment they felt 
had been made by the coach of the losing team.

Did you know?
     "Egregious" derives from the Latin word "egregius," 
meaning "distinguished" or "eminent." In its earliest English 
uses, "egregious" was a compliment to someone who had a 
remarkably good quality that placed him or her eminently above 
others. That's how English philosopher and theorist Thomas 
Hobbes used it in flattering a colleague when he remarked, "I 
am not so egregious a mathematician as you are." Since Hobbes' 
day, however, the meaning of the word has become noticeably 
less complimentary, possibly as a result of ironic use of its 
original sense.