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verboten: msg#00018culture.language.word-of-the-day
**************************************************************** Planning to catch some Zs this summer? Check out the new fourth edition of The Official SCRABBLE(R) Players Dictionary! http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/book.pl?scrabdic.htm&3 **************************************************************** The Word of the Day for July 19 is: verboten \ver-BOH-tun\ adjective : forbidden; especially : prohibited by dictate Example sentence: During the era of prohibition in the United States, when the sale of alcohol was verboten, speakeasies were routinely raided by the authorities and shut down. Did you know? Despite its spelling, the adjective "verboten" has nothing to do with "verb," or any of the other words in our language related to the Latin "verbum." Rather, "verboten" comes from German, which got it from Old High German "farboten," the past participle of the verb "farbioten," meaning "to forbid." ("Forbid" itself derives from Old English "forbeodan," a relative of "farbioten.") "Verboten," which first appeared in English in 1916, is used to describe things that are forbidden according to a law or a highly regarded authority. There also exists a noun "verboten," meaning "something forbidden by authority" (as in "well-established verbotens"), but this sense is quite rare and is typically entered only in large, unabridged dictionaries. |
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