It's Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for February 10th. Today's word is Callus, spelled C-A-L-L-O-G-L-O-G-E-N-T-E-N-T-E-E-N-T-E-A-L-L-O-S.

Callous is an adjective.

Someone or something described as callous does not

the problems or suffering of other people.

Here's the word used in a sentence from the Los Angeles Times by Brian Merchant.

The tragedy of AI is not that it stands to replace good journalists, but that it takes

every gross callous move made by management to degrade the production of content and promises to accelerate it.

A Callis, C-A-L-U-S, is a hard-thickened area of skin that develops usually from friction or

irritation over time.

Such a hardened area often leaves one less sensitive to the touch, so it's no surprise that the

adjective callous, C-A-L-O-S in addition to describing skin that is hard and

thick can also be used as a synonym for harsh or insensitive. Both callous and callis spelled with and without the O come via

Middle English from Latin. The figurative sense of Callis entered English almost

300 years after the literal sense, and Robert Lewis Stevenson used it

aptly when he wrote in Treasure Island. But indeed, from what I saw, all these

buccaneers were as callous as the sea they sailed on.

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

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