It's the Word of the Day podcast for September 6th.

Today's word is mollify, spelled M-O-L-L-I-F-Y.

Mollify is a verb. To mollify someone is to make them less angry. Molify can also mean to

reduce in intensity. Here's the word used. In a sentence from the Miami Herald, the philanthropic

move is likely meant to mollify angry residents who are protesting against the celebrity-filled

spectacle being held in their historic backyard.

The word mollifies particularly well suited for referring to the action of soothing emotional distress or anger

and softening hard feelings. It comes from the Latin adjective Mollice, meaning soft. Mollis is also the root of the English adjective

emollient, used to describe something such as hand lotions that softens or soothes, and the noun

mollusk, which refers to any one of a large group of animals, such as snails and clams,

that have a soft body without a backbone and

that usually live in a shell. With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.

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