It's the Word of the Day podcast for October 18th.
Today's word is Muse, spelled M-U-S-E.
Muse is a verb.
When Muse is used to mean to think about something carefully or thoroughly,
it's usually followed by about, on, over, or upon.
The word can also mean to become absorbed in thought or to think or say something in a thoughtful way.
Here's the word used in a sentence from the Harpswell anchor.
On a crisp winter's day,
100-year-old Peg Logan sits in her favorite wingback chair in the living room of her Harpswell home.
She flips through the pages of an oversized gardening book and muses about the vegetables she'll plant in the spring.
Muse on this.
The word muse comes from the Anglo-French verb musée, meaning to gape, to idle, to muse.
The image evoked is one of a thinker so absorbed in thought as to be unconsciously open-mouthed.
Those who muse on their pets musings might like to know that musée is ultimately from the medieval Latin noun musus,
meaning mouth of an animal, also the source of the word muzzle.
The noun muse,
which in lower case refers to a source of inspiration and when capitalized to one of the sister goddesses of Greek mythology,
has no etymological link.
That word comes from the Greek mausa.
The ultimate Greek origin of the word museum translates as of the muses.