It's the word of the day for June 9th.
Today's word is deleterious, spelled D-E-L-E-T-E-R-I-O-U-S.
Deleterious is an adjective.
It's a word used in formal speech and writing to describe something
that is damaging or harmful, usually in a subtle or unexpected way.
Here's the word used in a sentence from NOLA.com.
"Cancelling email addresses used by alumni over many years could have deleterious consequences
for professional networking, which will become increasingly important as the AI rollout accelerates
and disrupts careers for thousands of college graduates."
When you hold down the delete key on your keyboard or touchscreen, the effect—whoosh—is instantaneous.
Deleterious effects, however, are often not so obvious.
Deleterious, ultimately from a Greek word meaning "to hurt," is used to describe things
that are harmful in ways that are unexpected, slow-acting, or not readily apparent.
Although most often used in formal speech and writing, deleterious is far from rare.
It even pops up from time to time in film and television, especially from the mouths of wonky characters,
as when Seven of Nine warns the Doctor in an episode of Star Trek Voyager, "The nebula
is having a deleterious effect on the ship's technology." Or when Higgins exclaims in the original Magnum P.I.
series, "It's shocking what a deleterious effect a regimen of nothing
but mushrooms can have on a man." We'll take your word for it, Higgins.
With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.