advocate

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The Word of the Day for March 8 is:

advocate   \AD-vuh-kayt\   verb 
     : to plead in favor of 

Example sentence:
     Many parents throughout the district have long advocated full-day 
kindergarten.

Did you know?
     Benjamin Franklin may have been a great innovator in science and politics, 
but on the subject of "advocate," he was against change. In 1789, he wrote a 
letter to his compatriot Noah Webster complaining about a "new word": the verb 
"advocate." Like others of his day, Franklin knew "advocate" primarily as a 
noun meaning "one who pleads the cause of another," and he urged Webster to 
condemn the verb's use. Actually, the verb wasn't as new as Franklin assumed 
(etymologists have traced it back to 1599), though it was apparently surging in 
popularity in his day. Webster evidently did not heed Franklin's plea. His 
famous 1828 dictionary, _An American Dictionary of the English Language_, 
entered both the noun and the verb senses of "advocate." 





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