The Word of the Day podcast for September 1st.
Today's word is conscientious, spelled C-O-N-S-C-I-E-N-T-I-O-U-S.
Conscientious is an adjective.
It describes someone who is concerned with doing things correctly.
It can be used as a synonym for both the words meticulous and careful.
Here's the word used in a sentence from the San Diego Union Tribune.
Earth-friendly, conscientious gardeners learn to slow down and pay attention not only to plants
but to the many creatures that share the garden.
The garden teaches us valuable lessons.
It reminds us that balance is achieved not through sorting the natural world into neat categories,
but by respecting nature and allowing it to reveal to us its own complicated, interdependent, and beautiful gray areas.
As Mahatma Gandhi once wrote, there is a higher court than courts of justice, and that is the court of conscience.
A person who is conscientious makes sure that they are judged well by such a court.
This is true for someone who is governed by their conscience
as the oldest sense of the word is defined, as in a conscientious leader.
But it's also true for the conscientious person paying close, careful attention to the task at hand.
Conscientious came to English from French centuries after Middle English had adopted conscience from Anglo-French.
Both ultimately come from the Latin verb skire, meaning to know.
With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.
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