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quotidian: msg#00026

culture.language.word-of-the-day

Subject: quotidian

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The Word of the Day for January 27 is:

quotidian \ kwoh-TID-ee-un\ adjective
1 : occurring every day
*2 : belonging to each day : everyday
3 : commonplace, ordinary

Example sentence:
As an employee, Fiona is gifted at solving the difficult problems that
arise from time to time, but she is often careless about the quotidian
responsibilities of her job.

Did you know?
In Shakespeare's play _As You Like It_, the character Rosalind observes
that Orlando, who has been running about in the woods carving her name on trees
and hanging love poems on branches, "seems to have the quotidian of love upon
him." Shakespeare's use doesn't make it clear that "quotidian" derives from a
Latin word that means "every day." But as odd as it may seem, Shakespeare's use
of "quotidian" is just a short semantic step away from the "daily" adjective
sense. Some fevers occur intermittently -- sometimes daily. The phrase
"quotidian fever" and the noun "quotidian" have long been used for such
recurring maladies. Poor Orlando is simply afflicted with such a "fever" of
love.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.





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