Word of the Day

: October 9, 2017

denegation

noun den-ih-GAY-shun

What It Means

: denial

denegation in Context

"I sought to interrupt him with some not very truthful denegation; but he waved me down, and pursued his speech." — Robert Louis Stevenson, The Master of Ballantrae, 1889

"I see Horton say emphatically No…. His denegation is plausible; Gray believes it and accepts it…." — Henry James, The Ivory Tower, 1917

Did You Know?

Even if we didn't provide you with a definition, you might guess the meaning of denegation from the negation part. Both words are ultimately derived from the Latin verb negare, meaning "to deny" or "to say no," and both first arrived in English in the 15th century. Negare is also the source of our abnegation ("self-denial"), negate ("to deny the truth of"), and renegade (which originally referred to someone who leaves, and therefore denies, a religious faith). Even deny and denial are negare descendants. Like denegation, they came to us from negare by way of the Latin denegare, which also means "to deny."