Friday, January 6, 2012

mendacious

Some words lend themselves to being useful in several positions in a sentences.  'Mendacious' is an example.

Arising from the Latin 'mendax'  (untruthful), it evolved into 17 Century Late Latin as 'mendacitas' and was absorbed into English as 'mendacity' where it continues to serve as a noun.

With various changes via suffixes it became mendacious (adjective), mendaciously (adverb) and mendaciousness, again, a noun.

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