PLAY PODCASTS
supersede
Episode 4630

supersede

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

June 26, 20192m 9s

Audio is streamed directly from the publisher (rss.art19.com) as published in their RSS feed. Play Podcasts does not host this file. Rights-holders can request removal through the copyright & takedown page.

Show Notes

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 26, 2019 is:


supersede \soo-per-SEED\ verb

1 a : to cause to be set aside

b : to force out of use as inferior

2 : to take the place or position of

3 : to displace in favor of another


Examples:

"What may someday supersede Einstein's hypothesis is any genius' good guess. In the meantime, not only the theory of relativity but also Newton's laws, with all their known limitations, serve us rather well in navigating through space and in constructing bridges and dams on earth." — Henry Petroski, To Engineer is Human, 1992

"This park also supersedes what must have been the world's cleverest playground—a 10-foot-high fort made of telephone poles or logs up the hill at Rocky Ridge Park. (That simple, but popular play area was dismantled. Kids kept getting their heads stuck between the poles.)" — Jim McClure, The York (Pennsylvania) Daily Record, 5 May 2019


Did you know?

Supersede ultimately derives from the Latin verb supersedēre, meaning "to sit on top of" (sedēre means "to sit"), "to be superior to," or "to refrain from," but it came to us through Scots Middle English, where it was rendered superceden and used in the sense of "to defer." It will come as no surprise that modern English speakers can be confused about how to spell this word—it sometimes turns up as supercede. In fact, some of the earliest records of the word in English show it spelled with a c. The s spelling has been the dominant choice since the 16th century, and while both spellings can be etymologically justified, supersede is now regarded as the "correct" version.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.