Pronounced: MEEL-yuh-rih-zuhm, noun
Notes: An interesting word, but I didn’t know it
Yesterday’s word
The word oppugn means “to call in question; to contradict; to dispute”
First usage
Our word came into English in the mid-1400s
Background / Comments
I had a kind of sense of the meaning, so my idea of “run down (as of someone’s character)” was pretty close. Our word came from the Latin word oppugnare (to fight or oppose), which came from ob- (against) and pugnare (to fight), which came from pugnus (fist).
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 