It's the Word of the Day podcast for January 20th.

Today's word is inimitable, spelled I-N-I-M-I-M-I-T-A-B-L-E.

Inimitable is an adjective. It describes someone or something that is impossible to

copy or imitate. Here's the word used in a sentence from the Nashville, Tennessee Tribune.

In a nation whose professed ideals include freedom, liberty, and independence, every American

is charged with an individual self-examination.

Such a searching self-examination helps us discover our precepts, ethics, ideals, principles, and purpose, a sense of mission.

Reverend King discovered his mission as a teenager at Morehouse College.

Although the son, grandson, and great-grandson of ministers, Reverend King initially aspired to be a lawyer. Then he encountered the inimitable Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays,

president of Morehouse College. The rest is history. Something that is inimitable is literally

not able to be imitated.

In actual usage, the word describes things so uniquely extraordinary as to not be copied or equaled,

which is why you often hear it used to praise outstanding talents or performances,

or uniquely talented and incomparable individuals. The less common antonym imitable describes things that are common or ordinary and could easily be replicated.

Inimitable comes via middle English from the Latin adjective inimitabiles.

Be careful not to confuse it with inimical or inimicable two adjectives, meaning hostile

or harmful, those words come from a different Latin root. With your word of the day, I'm Peter

Sokolos.

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