- Today's Word
Moratorium
mor-uh-TOR-ee-um
Definition
(noun) A temporary suspension or delay of an activity, often by legal authority.
Example
The city announced a moratorium on new construction permits.
Fun Fact
Moratorium is often used in legal, governmental, or corporate settings to put a temporary halt to something controversial or under review—think eviction moratoriums or moratoriums on drilling. It originally comes from Latin morari, meaning “to delay.” You’ll often hear it in debates around environmental policy, legislation, and labor strikes—where it signals a pause, but not a solution.
(noun/verb) A gentle, continuous murmuring sound made by water or a person speaking rapidly and excitedly.
The hikers followed the burble of the stream through the dense forest long before they could see it, the sound guiding them toward water and rest.
Burble is an example of onomatopoeia — a word whose sound imitates the thing it describes. It emerged in Middle English as an imitative word for the sound of bubbling or gurgling water, related to the Old French borboiller, meaning “to bubble.” Lewis Carroll famously used it in Jabberwocky — “the Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, came whiffling through the tulgey wood, and burbled as it came” — cementing its place in the English literary imagination as a word that sounds exactly like what it means.