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Word of the Day for Saturday, April 18, 2009quiddity \KWID-ih-tee\, n.: 1. The essence, nature, or distinctive peculiarity of a thing. He wanted to capture not just live animals, but the aliveness of animals in their natural state: their wildness, their quiddity, the fox-ness of the fox and the crow-ness of the crow She has looked after my interests with consummate skill, dealt with my quiddities and constantly kept up my spirits. It is neither grammatical subtleties nor logical quiddities, nor the witty contexture of choice words or arguments and syllogisms, that will serve my turn. I began . . . to give some thought to the memoir I had promised to write and wondered how I would go about it -- his freaks, quiddities, oddities, his eating, drinking, shaving, dressing and playfully savaging his students. Quiddity comes from the scholastic Medieval Latin term quidditas, "essence," from quid, "what." | |||||||||
Words of a feather flock together. | |||||||||
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