Welcome to Wondrous Words Wednesday, a meme hosted by Kathy of bermudaonion.
I chose my word this week from a story I heard on NPR about “Social Television.”
(Yes, I listen to a lot of NPR- on the dreadmill, or even in the car. With radio news, I don’t have to worry about disturbing images for my children…)
In 2012, broadcasters worked hard to get their shows viewed not just on TVs, but also on “second screens:” laptops, tablets, and smartphones. An industry guru described this phenomenon as “nascent.”
I paused in my morning preparations to consider this word nerdy word. A little voice suggested nascent must have something to do with birth. I looked it up in Websters:
nascent \’nas-ənt\ adj from the Latin nascent, nascens, to be born; coming or having recently come into existence
A ha! I love it when the little nerdy voice is right!
Word Nerd Workout
Think of another nascent phenomenon and write a sentence about it. In our tech focused society, this shouldn’t be too hard. My example:
Last night Eli read a book to the family; we were all impressed with his nascent skills at deciphering the words.
Leave your workout in the comments, and thanks for joining in the discussion!
The problem is it’s now very over-used in media.
I can’t read an article without seeing nascent… or red!
Whenever there is an earthquake, it is without fail called a ‘temblor’ in the media. Every single time. Who calls it that?
Remember preternatural? It was desperately overused, but now it’s fading out. When was this ever used in a sentence?
Nascent is a great word, but I like dreadmill even more (I assume it’s not a typo, but even if it was, it’s genius!).
LOL! I meant dreadmill- I much prefer to run outside! Glad you liked it! 🙂
Playing off of Kathy’s suggestion:
My husband works with the nascent country of South Sudan, and he’ll be visiting there this summer.
Excellent! Does that mean you and McGee junior will be going too?
I’m not surprised that nascent means newly birthed. I’m a little surprised to hear it applied to technology, but I guess I shouldn’t be. It takes some mental adjusting, but I’ll get over it, lol!
Maybe that’s why it stuck out to me during the NPR story! It’s kinda cool to take a word and try it in a new setting/topic.
It’s my first time coming across that word and what a great little word.
Well thanks Monique!
Terrific word today! I did know it, but your post gave me more to think about.
In kindergarten, the young children kids were not afraid of the Apple computers, and some seemed to possess a nascent ability to figure out how to do things that their teacher didn’t know how to do.
Glad I got you thinking, and that’s a great workout sentence!
I think I can do this:
“We were impressed with our son’s nascent ability to explain the Latin words he learned last week.”
Hester, 😉
You did do it! Good job!
I knew that had to do with birth as well. I wonder if it could be used to refer to the birth of a nation.
Kathy, I think it has been! I can just picture Thomas Jefferson writing something about our nascent country…