Word of the Day

: November 12, 2020

abnegate

verb AB-nih-gayt

What It Means

1 formal : deny, renounce

2 formal : surrender, relinquish

abnegate in Context

"If the goal is only ensuring balance, then journalists can feel their work is done when they have reported accusations flung from each side, abnegating the responsibility to examine the validity of the attacks." — Deborah Tannen, The Christian Science Monitor, 22 Oct. 2004

"The chief obstacle just might be—boredom. After all, how often can people reasonably apply themselves to grilled chicken, brown rice and vegetables (or similar worthies)? Does watching what you eat necessarily mean abnegating flavor and variety?" — Johnathan L. Wright, The Reno (Nevada) Gazette Journal, 28 Jan. 2020

Did You Know?

There's no denying that the Latin root negāre has given English some useful words. That verb, which means "to deny," is the source of the noun abnegation, a synonym of denial. In time, people concluded that if there was a noun abnegation, there ought to be a related verb abnegate, and so they created one by a process called back-formation (that's the process of trimming an affix off a long word to make a shorter one). Other English offspring of negāre are deny, negate, and renegade.