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🗓️ 4 January 2025
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Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 4, 2025 is:
fulminate • \FULL-muh-nayt\ • verb
To fulminate is to complain loudly or angrily about something.
// The editorial fulminated against the corruption in the state government that has been recently uncovered.
Examples:
“When Reagan fulminated against the Soviet Union, his aides, fearing nuclear war, challenged him.” — Daniel Immerwahr, The New Yorker, 9 Sept. 2024
Did you know?
Lightning strikes more than once in the history of fulminate. The word comes from the Late Latin fulmināre, meaning “to strike down or confound (an opponent),” which in turn traces back to the Latin verb (same spelling) meaning “to strike” (used of lightning) or simply “to strike like lightning”; that word's source is the noun fulmen, meaning “lightning.” When fulminate was taken up by English speakers in the 15th century, it lost much of its ancestral thunder and was used largely as a technical term for the issuing of formal denunciations by church authorities. In time, its original lightning spark returned, and it’s now used when someone issues verbal “lightning strikes” in the midst of a brouhaha, tirade, or tweetstorm.
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0:00.0 | It's the Word of the Day podcast for January 4th. |
0:11.4 | Today's word is fulminate, spelled Ful-M-I-N-A-T-E. |
0:16.9 | Fulminate is a verb. To fulminate is to complain loudly or angrily about something. |
0:22.1 | Here's the word used in a sentence from the New Yorker by Daniel Imrewar. |
0:26.3 | When Reagan fulminated against the Soviet Union, his aides fearing nuclear war challenged him. |
0:33.9 | Lightning strikes more than once in the history of the word fulminate. It comes from the late Latin |
0:40.1 | fulminare, meaning to strike down or confound an opponent, which in turn traces back to the |
0:46.3 | Latin verb, meaning to strike, used of lightning, or simply to strike like lightning. That word's |
0:53.5 | source is the noun fulman, meaning lightning. |
0:57.1 | When Fulminate was taken up by English speakers in the 15th century, it lost much of its |
1:02.9 | ancestral thunder and was used largely as a technical term for the issuing of formal denunciations |
1:09.0 | by church authorities. In time, its original lightning spark returned, |
1:14.0 | and it's now used when someone issues verbal lightning strikes |
1:18.2 | in the midst of a brouhaha tirade or tweet storm. |
1:23.1 | With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski. |
1:29.0 | Visit Miriamwebster.com today for definitions, wordplay, and trending word lookups. |
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