Today's Word

Quibble

[KWIB-uhl]

Definition

(verb) To argue or raise objections about a trivial matter or minor point, especially in an attempt to evade a truth or responsibility. As a noun, it refers to the act of raising such an objection or the objection itself.

Example

Instead of addressing the main issue, the politician quibbled over the exact wording of the question, frustrating both the interviewer and the audience.

Fun Fact

The word “quibble” is believed to have originated in the early 17th century. It may be related to the now-obsolete word “quib,” meaning a quip or witty remark. Some linguists suggest it might be connected to the Latin word “quibus,” which was used in legal documents and could be seen as a source of petty arguments. Over time, “quibble” has come to be associated with nitpicking or splitting hairs, often in a way that detracts from the main point of a discussion or argument.

Previous Words

Vaunt

Today's Word

Vaunt

VAWNT

Definition

(verb/noun) To boast about or praise something excessively, especially one’s own achievements or qualities.

Example

The company’s much-vaunted innovation strategy had produced exactly one product in three years — a fact the press release somehow failed to mention.

Word Origin

Vaunt derives from the Old French vanter, meaning “to boast,” from the Late Latin vanitare — from vanus, meaning “empty” or “vain.” The same root gives us vanity, vain, and vanish — all words built around emptiness or the illusion of substance. It entered English in the 15th century, used to describe the kind of boasting that draws attention to itself precisely because what lies beneath it cannot support the weight of the claim being made.

Fun Fact

The most celebrated vaunter in English literature is almost certainly Sir John Falstaff — Shakespeare’s magnificently self-aggrandizing knight whose vaunting bears no relationship whatsoever to his actual military record. In Henry IV Part 1, Falstaff claims to have fought off eleven men in buckram single-handedly, a number that grows with each telling until Prince Hal quietly deflates the entire account. Shakespeare used Falstaff’s vaunting to make a precise point about the relationship between self-promotion and reality — that the volume of a boast is often inversely proportional to the substance behind it, a principle that has lost none of its relevance in the six centuries since.

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Quibble

Definition

Example

Previous Words

Vaunt

Vaunt

Definition

Example

Word Origin

Vaunt

Hauteur

Acrimonious

Bathetic

Welter