tenet

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 20, 2017 is: tenet • \TEN-ut\  • noun : a principle, belief, or doctrine generally held to be true; especially : one held in common by members of an organization, movement, or profession Examples: According to many, the first tenet of real estate is that location is fundamental to determining the value of a property. "A basic tenet of [Frank Lloyd] Wright's designs was that structures should grow out of the features that are already on the land, that land and buildings should seem an integrated whole." — Linda Charlton, The Daily Commercial (Leesburg, Florida), 20 Dec. 2016 Did you know? In Latin, tenet is the third person singular of the verb tenēre ("to hold") and means "he/she/it holds." It is believed to have been borrowed into English around 1600 from Latin writings in which it often introduced the opinions held by a particular church or sect. There are a good many tenēre descendants in English, including some words that end in -tain (abstain, contain, maintain, and sustain, to name a few), and others that begin with ten- (such as tenable, meaning "capable of being held," and tenacious). See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.