Pronounced: suh-LAN-der, noun
Notes: When I saw the pronunciation, it reminded me of “slander” stretched to three syllables (more in comments).
Yesterday’s word
The word calumniate means “to make false statements about someone maliciously”
First usage
Our word came into English in the mid-1500s
Background / Comments
It is a total coincidence that our word can mean “slander”, and today’s word sounds a lot like “slander”. As I noted yesterday, I was close to the meaning: I was aware of the noun calumnies, but I thought it merely meant “lies”, so I thought our word was a fancy one for lying… I missed the ‘malicious’ part of the definition, and I’m not sure I knew that it was lies ‘about someone’. Anyway, our word comes from the Latin word calumniari (to accuse falsely).
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 