Word of the Day podcast for May 25th.
Today's word is sacrosanct, spelled S-A-C-R-O-S-A-N-C-T.
It's a formal word that describes something too important and respected to be changed or criticized.
Sacrosanct is an adjective.
It can also mean most sacred or holy.
Here's the word used in a sentence from the North Platte Telegraph.
Senator Paul Strommen of Sidney said, "There's no appetite among senators
to empty the Veterans Aid Fund. There's certain things that are kind of sacrosanct,
and Veterans Aid is one of those things." Contrary to the beliefs of some, language is not sacrosanct.
Rather, it is subject to constant modification based on the needs, experiences, and even whims of those who use it.
Take the word sacrosanct itself, which likely comes from the Latin phrase sacro sanctus,
meaning "made holy by a sacred rite." There's a definite semantic softening from that to the "too important
and respected to be changed or criticized" meaning of sacrosanct.
But holy moly, has sanctus led to a whole bunch of other English words with a truly pious flavor,
from the word saint and sanctimony to sanctify and sanctuary.
Sacrum, meaning "a sacred rite," source of the sacro in sacro sanctus, is no slouch either,
living on in English anatomy as the name for our pelvic vertebrae—a shortening of os sacrum,
which translates literally as "holy bone." With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.
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