I recently signed up for The Word of the Day daily emails from Dictionary.com.One word I received is a bit curious:
pusillanimous \pyoo-suh-LAN-uh-muhs\, adjective:
Lacking in courage and resolution; contemptibly fearful; cowardly.
Evil, unspeakable evil, rose in our midst, and we as a people were too weak, too indecisive, too pusillanimous to deal with it.-- Kevin Myers, "An Irishman's Diary", Irish Times, October 20, 1999
Under the hypnosis of war hysteria, with a pusillanimous Congress rubber-stamping every whim of the White House, we passed the withholding tax.-- Vivien Kellems, Toil, Taxes and Trouble
You are now anxious to form excuses to yourself for a conduct so pusillanimous.-- Ann Radcliffe, The Italian
Pusillanimous comes from Late Latin pusillanimis, from Latin pusillus, "very s
mall, tiny, puny" + animus, "soul, mind."I think we all use the shorter, 5 letter version of pusillanimous more often, don’t cha???
Happy Monday.
- The Mountain Cat
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11 comments:
Ahh, but if we use "pusillanimous" we could offend a lot of people without them even knowing they'd been offended!
I never knew the origin of the slang term. I learn so much at YJKOBT.
Thanks! Now when children are around I can call people 'puny souls'.
Very interesting...'fraidy cat', 'pussy cat' - now I see...!
Don't cha wish your girlfriend was pusillanimous like me? Don't cha?
ROTFL!
I'll have to write this word down and practice it. Insulting people using fancy words is a lot more fun than using the slang.
The shorter five letter word? Pusil? ; ) Cheers!!
I had to check to see if you made it up!
Or, as I sometimes call it "PussyBoy". That's an 8 letter word.
Hi Mountain Cat!
Is that a Pussy Willow?
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