Word of the Day

: September 7, 2020

plaudit

noun PLAW-dit

What It Means

1 : an act or round of applause

2 : enthusiastic approval — usually used in plural

plaudit in Context

"For all of the accolades, and two Grammys she's won, this might be the song and album that finally earns McKenna the plaudits her vocals also richly deserve." — Jay N. Miller, The Patriot Ledger (Quincy, Massachusetts), 22 July 2020

"Long before he was collecting headlines and plaudits for his work, Babcock was quietly creating a functioning farm to give people in his South Dallas neighborhood a real hand in improving their lives, through working on the farm or from being nourished by its fruits." — editorial, The Dallas Morning News, 8 July 2020

Did You Know?

You earn plaudits for your etymological knowledge if you can connect plaudit to words besides the familiar applaud and applause. A word coined by shortening Latin plaudite, meaning "applaud," plaudit had gained approval status in English by the first years of the 17th century. Latin plaudite is a form of the verb plaudere, meaning "to applaud"; plaudere, in turn, is ancestor to explode, plausible, and the archaic displode (a synonym of explode).