An Expansive Vocabulary

"She may not always be right, but she was always articulate!"

(Anne Taintor)

Today’s word for the day is…

sitzmark \SITS-mark\ noun
: a depression left in the snow by a skier falling backward

Example sentence: Proper skiing etiquette dictates that a skier who falls in the middle of a trail should smooth over his or her sitzmark so it won't pose a hazard to other skiers.

I once read (or heard….somewhere…and I don’t know where….) that there was one common thread among all successful people. They could come from all types of background, have different educations, claim success in various fields, but one thing all successful people had in common was a wide vocabulary. At the time, I remember thinking to myself, 'well, that's one thing I am capable of.'

Even before I heard/read this, I was always one for Word for the Day calendars. Taking them to work, some of my fellow employees and I would take the challenge to use the daily word in a sentence, correctly, before we finished our shift. It wasn’t always an easy task.

defenestration \dē-ˌfe-nə-ˈstrā-shən\ noun
: a throwing of a person or thing out of a window Hmmmm…

These days I subscribe to the Merriam-Webster Word of the Day, which shows up in my inbox each day. Comes with a little interesting history or some other ‘did you know’ tidbit.

I thought today’s was particularly interesting, having left several of them myself, and not even knowing there was a name for what I was…leaving. I can’t wait to try it out on Dearest Sister.