imprecate

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The Word of the Day for December 10 is:=20

imprecate   \IM-prih-kayt\   verb
          : to invoke evil on : curse

Example sentence:
          "The workers' sweating brows wrinkled, but I heard no one impr=
ecate the river; each just went back to passing along stories and sandba=
gs." (William Least Heat-Moon, _River-Horse_)

Did you know?
          It may surprise you to learn that a word that refers to wishin=
g evil upon someone has its roots in praying, but "imprecate" ultimately=
 derives from the Latin verb "precari," meaning "to pray, ask, or entrea=
t." "Precari" is also the ancestor of such English words as "deprecate" =
(which once meant "to pray against an evil," though that sense is now ar=
chaic), "precatory" ("expressing a wish") and even "pray" itself (which =
has deeper roots in the Latin noun for a request or entreaty, "prex").=20=






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