Today's Word

Penurious

puh-NYOOR-ee-uhs

Definition

(adjective) Extremely poor; unwilling to spend money; stingy.

Example

The penurious landlord refused to fix the broken heating system during winter.

Fun Fact

“Penurious” shares roots with the word penury, meaning extreme poverty. But beyond being poor, it also implies miserly behavior—think Ebenezer Scrooge before his Christmas transformation. The word paints a picture of both lack and refusal: having little and holding tight to what little one has.

Previous Words

Languor

Today's Word

Languor

LANG-ger

Definition

(noun) A state of pleasant tiredness or dreamy inactivity; a soft, luxurious lack of energy or motivation.

Example

The long afternoon, the slow ceiling fan, and the smell of rain left her in a state of deep, contented languor.

Word Origin

From Old French langueur, from Latin languor, derived from languere (“to be faint, to be listless, to droop”). Related to lax, languid, and slack — all sharing the Indo-European root (s)lēg- meaning “to be loose or slack.” Languor has always described a state of pleasant looseness — the body gone soft, the mind unmoored.

Fun Fact

Languor was a prized condition in Romantic poetry — Keats in particular made a kind of art of it. His “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode on Indolence” are essentially sustained meditations on the beauty of surrendering to a beautiful, purposeless drift. In the Victorian era, languor was also embraced by the Aesthetic Movement — figures like Oscar Wilde celebrated it as a mark of refined sensibility. To be languorous was to be too elevated for the crude busyness of ordinary life. Today, we might just call it a Sunday afternoon.

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Penurious

Definition

Example

Previous Words

Languor

Languor

Definition

Example

Word Origin

Languor

Belie

Undaunted

Wont

Recidivism