It's the Word of the Day podcast for April 7th.
Today's word is malleable, spelled M-A-L-L-E-A-B-L-E.
Malleable is an adjective.
Something described as malleable is capable of being stretched or bent into different shapes or capable of being easily changed or influenced.
Here's the word used in a sentence from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.
She begins by sculpting with malleable French clays to create her figures.
Then she makes a mold.
Language is constantly evolving.
The meanings, spellings, and pronunciations of words are reshaped over time.
Take, for example, the Latin noun, malleus, meaning hammer.
This word was adapted to create the Latin verb maleare,
meaning to hammer, which led eventually to the English adjective malleable.
Malleable originally meant capable of being extended or shaped by beating with a hammer,
and over time adopted the broader sense capable of being shaped, altered, or controlled.
If you guessed that the words mall and mallet, other English words for specific types of hammers,
are also modeled from Malleus, you've hit the nail on the head.
With your Word of the Day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.