So . . . what do the words ‘rapporteur,’ ‘vicissitude,’ and ‘tantamount’ have in common?
Nothing really, except they have all been the Word of the Day in the past week. It’s something I subscribe to online to enrich my vocabulary. Or to demonstrate how little I truly know.
In the beginning, I knew most of the words that showed up in my email box; but as the months and years passed something happened. Either Word of the Day figured out that I should have more difficult challenges or I’m becoming less erudite.
This all reminds me of taking Spelling in grade school. Each Monday, the class received a new list of twenty words to learn. On Tuesday we had to define them; on Wednesday we had to use them in a sentence; on Thursday we had a practice test. If you passed, you didn’t have to take the real one on Friday. Then the next week, we started over.
But none of the words was as difficult as the three I’ve listed here. Which means I still need to keep learning. For the record, ‘rapporteur’ is some who prepares reports and records. A reporter, if you will. A ‘vicissitude’ is something over which we have no control but changes things. I suppose that if your fiancé has a heart attack the day before your wedding, that’s a really huge vicissitude. And ‘tantamount’ means ‘equivalent.’ So this blog is tantamount to a memory about grade school spelling.
Except I probably would have had to take the Friday exam.
Leave a Reply