Ironworks Gaming Forum - Merriam-Webster Online's Word Of The Day

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I've always loved this site. I can't remember if it's been linked to before, but it's a great way to expand your vocabulary while learning mostly useless words. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Below is today's word, and if you look below this entry, on the page I've linked to, you can actually look back at the last few weeks worth of words.

Quote:

The Word of the Day for November 6 is:

diluvial • \duh-LOO-vee-ul\ • adjective
: of, relating to, or brought about by a flood

Example sentence:
"Not since 1935 have Houstonians . . . seen the magnitude of diluvial disaster experienced the last few days in the wake of Tropical Storm Allison." (The Houston Chronicle, June 11, 2001)

Did you know?
Late Latin "diluvialis" means "flood." It’s from "diluere" ("to wash away") and ultimately from "lavere" ("to wash"). English "diluvial" and its variant "diluvian" initially referred to the Biblical Flood. Geologists, archaeologists, fossilists, and the like used the words, beginning back in the mid-1600s, to mark a distinct geological turning point associated with the Flood. They also used "antediluvian" and "postdiluvian" to describe the periods before and after the Flood. It wasn’t until the 1800s that people started using "diluvial" for floods and flooding in general. American educator and essayist Caroline M. Kirkland, one early user of this sense, wrote, "Much of our soil is said to be diluvial—the wash of the great ocean lakes as they overflowed towards the south," in her essay Forest Life in 1850.

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Hey, this is great! But I don't get the useless part, diluvian seems like a good word to indicate a flood. I mean, isn't that what expensive vocabulary is all about: saying simple things the hard way to distinguish yourself from the flock?
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Well that certanily is interesting.

Quote:

Originally posted by Zuvio:
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Hey, this is great! But I don't get the useless part, diluvian seems like a good word to indicate a flood. I mean, isn't that what expensive vocabulary is all about: saying simple things the hard way to distinguish yourself from the flock?
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Check the Word of the Day backlog, and you'll see why I said "mostly" useless. ;)

Some of the words aren't very practical, but others can be useful, and occassionally, they even feature a word I actually know and use...lol.

i dont need no big word learning becuase if i write a paper i use the thesaures(sp?) [img]smile.gif[/img]

i prefer the word antediluvian, meaning something very old i.e. before the biblical flood.