temporize

Pronounced: TEM-puh-rize, verb

Note: This is a “borderline” word; I have run across it and had a sense of the meaning, but wasn’t quite right.

Yesterday’s word

The word lustrate means

• “to purify by means of rituals or ceremonies”
• “To remove undesirable people from an organization, especially in an abrupt or violent manner”

Background

My instincts about this word were correct; it does have the root of “light”; it comes from Latin lustrare “to make bright”. It contains the root word meaning “light”. I suppose (though the material I have doesn’t say) that when something was purified, it was brighter, and that is how that sense came to be.

First Usage

This word showed up in the early 1600s.