It's Merion Webster's word of the day for September 19th.

Today's word is approbation spelled A P P R O B A T I O N.

Apprabation is a noun. It's a formal word that refers to praise or approval. Here's the word used in a sentence from

psychology today. That's not to say that all slang terms end up on the ash heap of history.

Some of them break out and become incredibly popular.

The most successful by far is OK, which has become a universal means for expressing approbation.

Okay has been adopted into many other languages and it may be the most widely used

expression on the planet.

Aprobation is similar in meaning to approval, and it is also very close to approval etymologically.

Both words trace back to the Latin verb a probore meaning to prove or to approve

a probation meant proof when it first appeared in English in the 1300s and

by the early 1500s it had come to refer in the

13 hundreds, and by the early 1500s it had come to refer to the act of

formally or officially approving something,

a sense it still retains in certain church-related contexts.

Today, however, we mostly use in certain church-related contexts.

Today, however, we mostly use approbation

in the looser sense of approval, admiration, or praise.

The related verb, approbate, means to approve or sanction,

and the adjective a probatory means expressing approval or commendation.

With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.

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