Saturday, February 17, 2007

Word of the Day: Palinode

You may or may not know that you can customize Google's basic page--you can!--and one of the things I put on mine is the word of the day. An interesting things I've noticed is that every once in a while, instead of giving me a new word, it gives me the same one word, "palinode". This was a new one to me, which is always a cheap thrill for an English major, or at least it was a thrill the first time. Now, it's just a little puzzling each time. Palinode again? Why no new word today?

If you're wondering, here's the 411:

Function: noun
Etymology: Greek palinOidia, from palin + aeidein to sing -- more at ODE
1 : an ode or song recanting or retracting something in an earlier poem
2 : a formal retraction

No comments:

Post a Comment