Today's Word

Relegate

REL-uh-gayt

Definition

(verb) To assign someone or something to a lower position, status, or role—often as a form of dismissal or reduction in importance.

Example

After the scandal, the senator was relegated to a minor committee post.

Word Origin

Late Middle English: from Latin relegare, meaning “to send away,” from re- ‘again’ + legare ‘to send’.

Fun Fact

In sports leagues (especially in the UK), relegate has a specific and painful meaning: being bumped down to a lower division. But the word is also used in work, politics, and culture—when something is deemed less important or is subtly sidelined. You might relegate an annoying task to the bottom of your to-do list… or a brilliant idea could be wrongly relegated to “not now” status. It’s a powerful word for passive dismissal.

Previous Words

Contrived

Today's Word

Contrived

kun-TRYVD

Definition

(adjective) Obviously planned or forced rather than arising naturally; lacking authenticity or spontaneity.

Example

The film’s ending felt contrived — a sudden reconciliation between characters who had spent two hours proving they could never forgive each other.

Word Origin

Contrived comes from the verb contrive, rooted in the Old French controver, meaning “to imagine” or “to find out,” itself from the Latin contropare — “to compare” or “to devise.” It entered English in the 14th century originally meaning simply to plan or devise something cleverly. Over time the word acquired its current negative undertone, shifting from neutral ingenuity toward the suggestion of something manipulated or artificially engineered to produce a desired effect.

Fun Fact

The tension between “contrived” and “authentic” sits at the heart of one of cinema’s longest-running debates — the difference between classical Hollywood storytelling, where every plot point is engineered to produce a specific emotional response, and the naturalistic tradition championed by filmmakers like the French New Wave directors, who deliberately introduced improvisation and ambiguity to avoid exactly that engineered feeling. François Truffaut famously argued that a perfectly constructed plot was itself a form of dishonesty — that real life never resolves so neatly, and that contrivance in storytelling is a kind of lie told to comfort the audience.

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Relegate

Definition

Example

Word Origin

Previous Words

Contrived

Contrived

Definition

Example

Word Origin

Contrived

Inimical

Truculent

Obsequious

Abberation