advertent

****************************************************************
Calling all new word spotters! Now there's a forum for your
lexical discoveries--join Merriam-Webster Unabridged today! 
http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/unabridged_sub.pl?refr=U_wod
****************************************************************

The Word of the Day for June 23 is: 

advertent   \ad-VER-tunt\   adjective
     : giving attention : heedful

Example sentence:
     Marcia listened to everything I said with an advertent expression on her 
face, then proceeded to tell me, point by point, why she disagreed with me.

Did you know?
     You may be thinking that "advertent" should mean "intentional." After all, 
"inadvertent" means "unintentional." Take away the negative prefix "in-" and 
you're left with that word's opposite, right? If this is your line of thought, 
you're not entirely off base; the two words (which both entered English in the 
17th century and derive from Latin "advertere," meaning "to turn the mind or 
attention") are in fact closely linked. But "inadvertent" has another, older 
meaning: "inattentive" or "not focusing the mind on a matter." The established 
meaning of "advertent" falls opposite that older sense of "inadvertent." Does 
this mean that "advertent" never means "intentional"? Not exactly. We have seen 
some evidence of this use, but it's not yet well enough established to be 
entered in our dictionaries.