PAW-suh-tee
The paucity of affordable housing in the city has become a growing concern for residents.
Fun Fact
“Paucity” comes from the Latin paucus, meaning “few.” It’s often used in discussions of resources, such as food shortages, a lack of evidence, or even a paucity of ideas. A fun twist? While the word describes a shortage, the English language is anything but lacking in colorful vocabulary!
es-oh-TAIR-ik
(adjective) Intended for or understood by only a small group with specialized knowledge or interest.
The professor’s lecture was so esoteric that even her graduate students struggled to follow the references, let alone the first-year undergraduates in the back row.
Esoteric derives from the Greek esoterikos, meaning “belonging to an inner circle,” from esotero — “inner” — the comparative form of eso, meaning “within.” It was first used to describe the secret teachings of Pythagoras, shared only with his most devoted inner circle of disciples and deliberately withheld from the general public. The word entered English in the 17th century, carrying that same sense of guarded, inner-circle knowledge.
Fun Fact
The Pythagorean Brotherhood — the secretive philosophical society founded by Pythagoras in ancient Greece — divided its members into two tiers: the akousmatikoi, who received only the basic, outer teachings, and the mathematikoi, who were admitted to the esoteric inner circle and given access to Pythagoras’s deepest mathematical and philosophical doctrines. Members of the inner circle were reportedly forbidden from writing any of it down, eating beans, or picking up anything they had dropped — rules so bizarre that historians still debate whether Pythagoras was a genius, a cult leader, or both.
Today's Word Obsequious ob-SEE-kwee-us Definition (adjective) Excessively eager to please...
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