Peter Sokolowski
speaker
1,510 appearances
96 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 3d ago
Peter Sokolowski’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 96 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 35.
Appearances
Today's word is élan, also pronounced élan and spelled E-L-A-N.
There's an acute accent rising to the right
on the letter E. Élan refers to energy and enthusiasm.
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Here's the word used in a sentence from the New York Times.
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Carrying the production with the élan of a cheerful college quarterback...
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Luke Brady is an immediately likable leading man.
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Once upon a time, back in the early 1700s, English speakers did not have élan, the word that is, we've always had the potential for vigorous spirit.
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We had, however, the verb élance, meaning to throw, which was used for the launching of darts, javelins, and similar weaponry.
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Élance came from the Middle French s'élancer, meaning to rush, that is, to hurl oneself forth.
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Elance enjoyed only a short flight in English, falling into disuse by the mid-1800s, around which time English speakers picked up élan, another French word that traces back via the Middle French noun élan, meaning to rush, to élancer.
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We copied élan in form from the French, but we dispensed with the French sense of a literal rush or dash, retaining the sense of enthusiastic animation
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that we sometimes also characterize as dash, spunk, or vim.
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With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.
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The meaning of mitigate is straightforward enough to make something, such as a problem, symptom, or punishment, less harsh or severe.
Sometimes, however, mitigate appears where the similar-looking militate is expected –
That word, which is often followed by against, means to have weight or effect, as in, your unexcused absences are likely to militate against your getting a promotion.
The two words are not closely related.
Mitigate comes from the Latin verb mitigare, meaning to soften, whereas militate traces to militare, meaning to engage in warfare.
But confusion between the two has existed for long enough that some language experts accept mitigate against as an idiomatic alternative to militate.
Even William Faulkner used mitigate in this way in his 1932 short story, Centaur in Brass, writing, it's as though there were some intangible and invisible social force that mitigates against him.
Showing 981–1000 of 1,510 · page 50 of 76
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