Word of the Day

: December 25, 2017

conciliate

verb kun-SILL-ee-ayt

What It Means

1 : appease

2 : to gain (as goodwill) by pleasing acts

3 : to make compatible : reconcile

4 : to become friendly or agreeable

conciliate in Context

"He paused, half hopefully, half timidly, whenever Captain Whalley made the slightest movement in the deck-chair, as though expecting to be conciliated by a soft speech or else rushed upon and hunted off the bridge." — Joseph Conrad, The End of the Tether, 1902

"The notion of celebrating the American worker first surfaced in the early 19th century during the infancy of the American labor movement. Unfortunately, it took a nationwide railroad strike of nearly 4,000 factory employees … to get things started.… In an effort to conciliate organized labor after the strike, President Cleveland and Congress joined forces to declare Labor Day a national holiday." — Michelle Wilson, The Tallahassee (Florida) Democrat, 1 Sept. 2017

Did You Know?

A council is "an assembly or meeting for consultation, advice, or discussion," and it is often the task of a council to find compatibility in opposing views. It seems fitting, therefore, that the words council and conciliate both derive from the Latin word concilium, which means "assembly" or "council." Conciliate comes to us from the Latin conciliatus, the past participle of the verb conciliare (meaning "to assemble, unite, win over"), which in turn is from concilium. Council, on the other hand, derives from the Anglo-French cunseil or cuncile, from concilium. Other concilium descendants in English include conciliar ("of, relating to, or issued by a council") and the rare conciliabule ("a clandestine meeting especially of conspirators or rebels").