It's the Word of the Day podcast for November 5th.
Today's word is Cefology, spelled P-S-E-P-H-O-L-O-G-Y.
Cefology is a noun.
It's the scientific study of elections.
Here's the word used in a sentence from the Tallahassee Democrat by James Barberus.
The high school-aged participants of the program partake in various aspects of syphology,
from gaining support early in a campaign, to debating fellow candidates.
Syphology comes from the Greek word syphos, meaning pebble.
One relative of syphology is syphomancy, meaning divination by pebbles.
Syphology merited election as the name for the work of election analysts or syphologists
because pebbles were used by the ancient Greeks in voting.
Similarly,
the word ballot was an excellent choice for a means of voting since it comes from balotta,
an Italian word meaning little ball, and Italians once voted by placing such balls in a container.
With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sakolowski.
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