It's the Word of the Day podcast for July 19th.
Today's word is devise, spelled D-E-V-I-S-E.
Devise is a verb.
To devise is to invent or plan something that is difficult or complicated in some way.
Here's the word used in a sentence from the Boston Globe by Gary Washburn.
The Timberwolves surprisingly advanced to the Western Conference Finals last year before losing to the Mavericks.
After a troublesome season, Minnesota returned before being thumped by the top-seeded Thunder.
The series wasn't really close,
and the Timberwolves will have to devise a way to compete in the Western Conference with the Lakers,
Nuggets, Clippers, Spurs, Mavericks, and Warriors all chasing them.
There's something inventive about devise,
a word that stems from the Latin divideri, meaning to divide.
By the time devise was being used in English, its Anglo-French forebear, de visé,
had accumulated an array of senses, including divide, distribute,
arrange, order, plan, invent, and assign by will.
English adopted some of these and added new senses,
such as imagine and guess, that have fallen out of use over time.
Today, devise is most commonly used as a synonym of the words invent or plot,
in situations where the objective is difficult or complicated.
Note that devise is often confused with another divideri, and divise, descendant.