It's Merriam-Webster's word of the day for February 15th. Today's word is Enervate, spelled ENERER V-A-T-E-E-N-E-E-N-V-A-E-E-N-V-E-E-E-E-E-E-V-E-E-E-T-E-E-E-T-E-E-T is a verb. It's a formal word that. It's a formal word that. in which someone or something is being sapped of physical or mental vigor, vitality, or strength.

The verb is most common in the principal forms innervated and innervating, as in children innervated by the summer afternoon heat, and a tedious

discussion we found completely innervating.

Here's the word used in a sentence from the Atlantic by Dante Ramos.

Toward the end of paved paradise, author Henry Graber follows housing activists' efforts to legalize in-law apartments carved from single-family houses, in many cases from the garage.

The mere fact of this movement epitomizes the underlying problem. Local regulations have blocked

apartments while allowing parking structures because for most of seven or eight decades,

city planners got hung up on the wrong issue.

The visionaries of Victor Gruen's day simply failed to foresee

how the relentless promotion of parking spaces

might innervate cities and crowd out other needs.

Don't let any haziness in your understanding of the word enervate cause you to be enervated.

Confusion about this somewhat rare word is reasonable and aided greatly by the fact

that although enervate looks like a plausible product of the joining of the words, energize

and invigorate, it's actually an antonym of both.

Enervate comes from a form of the Latin verb enervare, which literally means to remove the sinews of, and figuratively means simply to weaken.

Enervare was formed from the prefix E, meaning out of, and Nervous, meaning sinew or nerve. So etymology at least someone who is enervated is out of nerve.

Knowing this you no longer need to be unnerved by it.

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

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