Quote of the Day

Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than curse  the darkness.

Terry Pratchett

Word of the Day

expatiate 

 pronounced  \ek-SPAY-shee-ayt\

verb

Definition

to move about freely or at will : wander

to speak or write at length or in detail

 Examples

"Humboldt … decided to deliver a series of lectures on the theme of, well, everything. He expatiated on meteorology, geology, plant geography, and ocean currents, as well as on fossils, magnetism, astronomy, human migration, and poetry." — Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, 26 Oct. 2015

The Latin antecedent of expatiate is exspatiari, which combines the prefix ex- ("out of") with spatiari ("to take a walk"), itself from spatium ("space" or "course"). Exspatiari means "to wander from a course" and, in a figurative sense, "to digress." But when English speakers began using expatiate in the mid-16th century, we took "wander" to mean simply "to move about freely." In a similar digression from the original Latin, we began using expatiate in a figurative sense of "to speak at length." That's the sense of the word most often used these days, usually in combination with on or upon.

Name That Synonym

 What 6-letter synonym of expatiate begins with "d" and can mean "to become wide" as well as "to comment at length"?

Merriam-Webster