imprimatur

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The Word of the Day for February 15 is:

imprimatur   \im-pruh-MAH-toor\   noun
     1 : a license to print or publish especially by Roman Catholic episcopal 
authority
    *2 : sanction, approval 

Example sentence: 
     The organization has been meeting on campus without the university's 
imprimatur.

Did you know?
     "Imprimatur" means "let it be printed" in New Latin. It comes from Latin 
"imprimere," meaning to "imprint" or "impress." In the 1600s, the word appeared 
in the front matter of books, accompanied by the name of an official 
authorizing the book's printing. It was also in the 1600s that English speakers 
began using "imprimatur" in the general sense of "official approval." The Roman 
Catholic Church still issues imprimaturs for books concerned with religious 
matters (to indicate that a work contains nothing offensive to Catholic morals 
or faith), and there have been other authorities for imprimaturs as well. For 
example, when Samuel Pepys was president of the Royal Society, he placed his 
imprimatur on the title page of England's great scientific work, Sir Isaac 
Newton's _Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy_, in 1687.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.





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