Word of The Day for Friday, March 4, 2011

pretermit

pre•ter•mit (pree-ter-MIT)  v

Definition:
1. to disregard intentionally or allow to pass unnoticed or unmentioned
2. to fail to do or include; omit, neglect
3. to suspend, interrupt or terminate

pretermitted past participle; pretermitted past tense; pretermitting present participle; pretermits 3rd person singular present; pretermission, pretermitter noun

Origin:
1510s, from L. praetermittere “let pass, overlook,” from praeter- "beyond, before, above, more than" + mittere "to send"

Related:
Synonyms: neglect, omit, overlook
Related Words: preterite, preternatural, omit, permit, commit, dismiss, mission, promise

Sentence Examples:
• Another dubious point is Oswald's argument in the first act as to the expensiveness of marriage as compared with free union. Since the parties to free union, as he describes it, accept all the responsibilities of marriage, and only pretermit the ceremony, the difference of expense, one would suppose, must be neither more nor less than the actual marriage fee.  -Ghosts, Henrik Ibsen

• 'Look here, now,' cut in the other, 'I'll tell you who I am: I'm Colour-Sergeant Brand of the Blankth. That'll tell you if I'm a drinking man or not.' It might and it might not, thus a Greek chorus would have intervened, and gone on to point out how very far it fell short of telling why the sergeant was tramping a country lane in tatters; or even to argue that he must have pretermitted some while ago his labours for the general defence, and (in the interval) possibly turned his attention to oakum. But there was no Greek chorus present; and the man of war went on to contend that drinking was one thing and a friendly glass another. -The Wrong Box, Robert Louis Stevenson & Lloyd Osbourne

• The rationalist avows a moral bias--an attitude towards his fellows, a moral 'taste,' let us say--which partly determines his reasoned judgment. He has a conception of goodness in virtue of which he finds 'revelation' frequently repellent and the popular 'God' a chimera; even as the believer finds them satisfactory because they are in part conformable to his moral and speculative bias, and he has been brought up to pretermit judgment beyond those limits. -Rationalism, John Mackinnon Robertson

Sources: Free Dictionary, Online Etymology

Word-E: A Word-A-Day

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