Word of the Day:

"Henry [Thoreau] was working at his journal, as he usually did for a part of each day. He was reading Chaucer and liking it. A couple of days later, on Monday, January 3, he made popcorn, which he playfully called 'cerealious blossoms' because they were 'only a more rapid blossoming of the seed under a greater than July heat.' On Wednesday, January 5, as early clouds gave way to midday sun, he praised manual labor as 'the best method to remove palaver from one’s style.' Maybe he took his own advice about palaver. We hear no more from him about cerealious blossoms." — Robert D. Richardson, Three Roads Back: How Emerson, Thoreau, and William James Responded to the Greatest Losses of Their Lives, 2023

More example sentences

Let’s talk about palaver. Though the word comes from Portuguese, it likely entered English by way of the West African coast in the 18th century. Portuguese sailors there used their word palavra, which in general use means "speech" or "word," as a term for discussions with the native people they encountered. English sailors applied palaver for the same, and then brought the word back to their own shores. The Portuguese word comes ultimately from the Late Latin noun parabola, meaning "speech" or "parable." If Portuguese isn’t in your wheelhouse, perhaps you’ll recognize the influence of Latin parabola on other tongues: the Spanish palabra, for instance, means "word," and the French parler means "to speak."