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secrete
Episode 4354

secrete

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day · Merriam-Webster

September 25, 20181m 37s

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Show Notes

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 25, 2018 is:


secrete \sih-KREET\ verb

1 : to deposit or conceal in a hiding place

2 : to appropriate secretly : abstract


Examples:

The squirrel had secreted nuts all over the yard in preparation for winter, and as spring approached, more were still to be found.

"Then he allegedly sneaked the cash into a truck, moved the truck outside and covered the bag with his raincoat before secreting it away in his personal car." — Tina Moore et al., The New York Post, 27 July 2018


Did you know?

If you guessed that the secret to the origins of secrete is the word secret, you are correct. Secrete developed in the mid-18th century as an alteration of a now obsolete verb secret. That verb had the meaning now carried by secrete and derived from the familiar noun secret ("something kept hidden or unexplained"). The noun, in turn, traces back to the Latin secretus, the past participle of the verb secernere, meaning "to separate" or "to distinguish." Incidentally, there is an earlier and distinct verb secrete with the more scientific meaning "to form and give off (a secretion)." That secrete is a back-formation from secretion, another word that can be traced back to secernere.

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Topics

ENGLISHWORD A DAYDICTIONARYMERRIAM-WEBSTERVOCABULARYLANGUAGEWEBSTERMERRIAMWORDWORDSWORD OF THE DAY