Word of The Day for Tuesday, December 21, 2010

apiary

a•pi•ar•y (EY-pee-er-ee)  n

Definition:
a place where bees and beehives are kept, especially a place where bees are raised for their honey


Origin:
1654; from L. apiarium "beehouse, beehive," neut. of apiarius "of bees," from apis "bee," a mystery word unrelated to any similar words in other I.E. languages

Related:

Related Words: apiarist: beekeeper

Sentence Examples:
• How the bees love it, and they bring the delicious odor of the blooming plant to the hive with them, so that in the moist warm twilight the apiary is redolent with the perfume of buckwheat -Locusts and Wild Honey, John Burroughs

• The scene was deep in the forests of Ohio, a short distance from the Miami river. An Indian town of twenty-five or thirty lodges here stood, resembling a giant apiary, with its inhabitants flitting in and out, darting hither and thither, like so many bees. -Oonomoo the Huron, Edward S. Ellis

• On the contrary, the exhibition of the wealth and strength of the colonies during that war, excited her jealousy, led to greater exactions, and were made a pretense for more flagrant acts of injustice. She seemed to regard the Americans as industrious bees, working in a hive in her own apiary, in duty bound to lay up stores of honey for her especial use, and entitled to only the poor requital of a little treacle. -Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851

The Storyline
When she managed to break away, she went out into the shop where she hoped to find buzzing, chirping hive of activity.  But what she found was neither apiary nor aviary.


Sources: Free Dictionary, Online Etymology

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

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