invidious

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 21, 2015 is: invidious • \in-VID-ee-us\  • adjective 1 : tending to cause discontent, animosity, or envy 2 a : unpleasant, objectionable, or obnoxious b : of a kind to cause harm or resentment Examples: "Consider the intimate and curious acquaintance one makes with various kinds of weeds … disturbing their delicate organizations so ruthlessly, and making such invidious distinctions with his hoe, levelling whole ranks of one species, and sedulously cultivating another." — Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854 "Organizations that practice invidious discrimination detract from social justice. Whatever benefits they may have (of tradition, solidarity, community and self-expression) are undercut by the unpleasantness of treating people differently on the basis of arbitrary characteristics." — Noah Feldman, The Contra Costa (California) Times, 28 Jan. 2015 Did you know? Fittingly, invidious is a relative of envy. Both are descendants of invidia, the Latin word for "envy," which in turn comes from invidēre, meaning "to look askance at" or "to envy." (Invidious descends from invidia by way of the Latin adjective invidiosus, meaning "envious," whereas envy comes to English via the Anglo-French noun envie.) These days, however, invidious is rarely used as a synonym for envious. The preferred uses are primarily pejorative, describing things that are unpleasant (such as "invidious choices" and "invidious tasks") or worthy of scorn ("invidious remarks" or "invidious comparisons"). See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.