Word of the Day

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 22, 2019 is:

whinge • \WINJ\  • verb

British : to complain fretfully : whine

Examples:

"I was angry, I went home to my wife and I complained. I was whinging an Olympic level of whinging to Deb, my wife, and moaning about this person and that person." — Hugh Jackman, quoted in MailOnline, 4 June 2019

"For those who whinged that the Freddie Mercury biopic 'Bohemian Rhapsody' played fast and loose with the facts and the timeline—and I was one—it must be said that director Dexter Fletcher's Elton John movie 'Rocketman' takes even more liberties with truth." — Jim Sullivan, WBUR.org, 31 May 2019

Did you know?

Whinge isn't a simple spelling variant of whine. Whinge and whine are actually entirely different words with separate histories. Whine traces to an Old English verb, hwinan, which means "to make a humming or whirring sound." When hwinan became whinen in Middle English, it meant "to wail distressfully"; whine didn't acquire its "complain" sense until the 16th century. Whinge, on the other hand, comes from a different Old English verb, hwinsian, which means "to wail or moan discontentedly." Whinge retains that original sense today, though nowadays it puts less emphasis on the sound of the complaining and more on the discontentment behind the complaint.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 21, 2019 is:

redaction • \rih-DAK-shun\  • noun

1 a : an act or instance of preparing something for publication 

b : an act or instance of obscuring or removing something from a document prior to publication or release

2 : a work that has been redacted : edition, version

Examples:

"The city released Craddock's emailed resignation, but redacted the send and receive times as well as the recipients. A city attorney said the entire document is considered a personnel record and is subject to redaction under the state's Freedom of Information Act." — Alissa Skelton, The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, Virginia), 14 June 2019

"The black redaction box is meant to protect sensitive information from public view. It's supposed to be an impenetrable curtain. But sometimes that curtain is surprisingly easy to raise." — Phillip Bantz, Law.com, 19 Dec. 2018

Did you know?

Here's a quiz for all you etymology buffs. Can you pick the words from the following list that come from the same Latin root?

A. redaction B. prodigal C. agent D. essay
E. navigate F. ambiguous

If you guessed all of them, you are right. Now, for bonus points, name the Latin root that they all have in common. If you knew that it is the verb agere, meaning to "to drive, lead, act, or do," you get an A+. Redaction is from the Latin verb redigere ("to bring back" or "to reduce"), which was formed by adding the prefix red- (meaning "back") to agere. Some other agere offspring include act, agenda, cogent, litigate, chasten, agile, and transact.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 20, 2019 is:

cogent • \KOH-junt\  • adjective

1 a : appealing forcibly to the mind or reason : convincing

b : pertinent, relevant

2 : having power to compel or constrain

Examples:

At the town meeting, citizens presented many cogent arguments in support of building a new senior center.

"The council made the difficult decision to raise property taxes by a total of 6 cents…. [The] decision to earmark the full 4 cents for educational capital expenditures was a difficult one, and there were cogent, logical arguments to be made in favor of keeping the city's options open regarding the use of funds." — Kate McConnell and Anthony Smith, The Roanoke (Virginia) Times, 21 Apr. 2019

Did you know?

"Trained, knowledgeable agents make cogent suggestions... that make sense to customers." It makes sense for us to include that comment from the president of a direct marketing consulting company because it provides such a nice opportunity to point out the etymological relationship between the words cogent and agent. Agent derives from the Latin verb agere, which means "to drive," "to lead," or "to act." Adding the prefix co- to agere gave Latin cogere, a word that literally means "to drive together"; that ancient term ultimately gave English cogent. Something that is cogent figuratively pulls together thoughts and ideas, and the cogency of an argument depends on the driving intellectual force behind it.