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placate: msg#00005

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Subject: placate

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The Word of the Day for February 6 is:

placate \PLAY-kayt\ verb
: to soothe or mollify especially by concessions : appease

Example sentence:
After his baseball crashed through his neighbor's window,
Jared tried to placate the angry man by offering to replace the
window with his own money.

Did you know?
The earliest documented uses of "placate" in English date
from the late 17th century. The word is derived from the
Latin "placatus," the past participle of "placare," and even
after more than 300 years in English it still carries the basic
meaning of its Latin ancestor: "to soothe" or "to appease."
Other "placare" descendants in English are "implacable"
(meaning "not easily soothed or satisfied") and "placation"
("the act of soothing or appeasing"). Even "please" itself,
derived from the Latin "placere" ("to please"), is a distant
relative of "placate."







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