{UAH} WORD OF THE DAY July 23, 2019-------------desideratum

WORD OF THE DAY July 23, 2019

desideratum    noun | dih-sid-uh-RAH-tum   Definition   : something desired as essential   Scroll down for more about desideratum     TRENDING NOW: condemn gerrymander gerrymandering concentration camp SEE ALL      PEOPLE ARE READING   Is It 'Jail' or 'Prison'?     A Journey to the Moon in 12 Words   The Good, The Bad, & The Semantically Imprecise - 7/19/19     On 'Perpetrate' and 'Perpetuate'       WORD GAMES AND QUIZZES: WEEKLY CHALLENGE     What's that Smell?! Quiz   Words for odors and such...     PLAY NOW     Nailed this quiz? We have plenty more to try! TAKE ME THERE        Did You Know?   We'd like to introduce you to some close cousins of the common word desire. All trace their roots to the Latin sīder-, or sīdus, which has historically been understood to mean "heavenly body," but which may also have an older, non-celestial meaning of "mark, target, goal." Whether etymologically starry or grounded, dēsīderāre, meaning "to long for," was born when Latin de- was prefixed to sīder-. Dēsīderāre begat Anglo-French desirer, which in turn brought forth English desire, desirous, and desirable in the 13th and 14th centuries, with desideration following in the 15th. Then, in the 17th century, English acquired desiderate ("to wish for") and desideratum (desiderata in the plural), all of which can lay claim to direct ancestry from desiderare.     Examples of DESIDERATUM   "The strength of his class depended to some extent on sound money management—but depended to a much larger extent on marriages based cynically on the sorts of children likely to be produced. Healthy, charming, wise children were the desiderata." — Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., The Sirens of Titan, 1959   "The year was 1953, and most American children were secretly wishing, praying and writing letters to Santa Claus promising to be nice rather than naughty in return for that ultimate desideratum of gifts: the 'real, live pony.'" — Ken Jennings, The Petoskey (Michigan) News-Review, 24 Dec. 2014   Test Your Vocabulary   Fill in the blanks to complete a verb that means "to have a strong or persistent desire": ha _ _ _ r.   VIEW THE ANSWER              MORE WORD FUN:       WORD GAMES            TRENDING NOW            WORDS AT PLAY      FOLLOW US:

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