Word of the Day

: June 24, 2018

effigy

noun EFF-uh-jee

What It Means

: an image or representation especially of a person; especially : a crude figure representing a hated person

effigy in Context

"At one meeting, he remembers, the leader of a competing company was hung in effigy as employees cheered." — Evan Bush, The Seattle Times, 25 Feb. 2018

"On the gathering's penultimate day, the giant effigy—or Man, as it is known—is set ablaze during a raucous, joyful celebration." — John Rogers and Janie Har, The Chicago Sun-Times, 28 Apr. 2018

Did You Know?

An earlier sense of effigy is "a likeness of a person shaped out of stone or other materials," so it's not surprising to learn that effigy derives, by way of Middle French, from the Latin effigies, which, in turn, comes from the verb effingere ("to form"), a combination of the prefix ­ex- and fingere, which means "to shape." Fingere is the common ancestor of a number of other English nouns that name things you can shape. A fiction is a story you shape with your imagination. Figments are shaped by the imagination, too; they're something you imagine or make up. A figure can be a numeral, a shape, or a picture that you shape as you draw or write.