Pronounced: klar-ih-GAY-shun, noun
Notes: Not a word I’ve run across
Yesterday’s word
The word comminate means
- to threaten with divine punishment or vengeance
- to curse
First usage
Our word came into English in the early 1600s
Background / Comments
I thought of ‘commune’ or ‘communicate’, but those are clearly not close to the meaning at all. Our word is a back formation (that means that another form of the word existed and the word was created) from the noun commination, which came from Late Middle English, which came from Anglo-French, which came from the Latin word comminātiōn, which is related to comminātus, the past participle of comminārī (to threaten).
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 