Word of the Day

: April 30, 2020

emblem

noun EM-blum

What It Means

1 : a picture with a motto or set of verses intended as a moral lesson

2 : an object or the figure of an object symbolizing and suggesting another object or an idea

3 a : a symbolic object used as a heraldic device

b : a device, symbol, or figure adopted and used as an identifying mark

emblem in Context

"The picture, changed or unchanged, would be to him the visible emblem of conscience." — Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

"The 1870 home was built by the city's first Presbyterian minister, Rev. Thomas Smith, who modeled it after his ancestral home in Scotland. A symbolic thistle—Scotland's national emblem—is sculpted onto the marble fireplace." — Sharon Roznik, The Reporter (Fond du Lac, Wisconsin), 18 Mar. 2020

Did You Know?

Both emblem and its synonym symbol trace back to the Greek verb bállein, meaning "to throw." Emblem arose from embállein, meaning "to insert," while symbol comes from symbállein, Greek for "to throw together." Bállein is also an ancestor of the words parable (from parabállein, "to compare"), metabolism (from metabállein, "to change"), and problem (from probállein, "to throw forward"). Another, somewhat surprising, bállein descendant is devil, which comes from Greek diabolos, literally meaning "slanderer." Diabolos in turn comes from diabállein, meaning "to throw across" or "to slander."