Word of the Day for Friday, August 31, 2007
egregious \ih-GREE-juhs\, adjective:
Conspicuously and outrageously bad or reprehensible.
But by failing to understand the asymmetry of commitment between the United States and the Vietnamese communists, they paved the way for committing the most egregious error a country going to war can make: underestimating the adversary's capacity to prevail while overestimating one's own.
-- Jeffrey Record, The Wrong War
Mr. Gordon says he does not particularly like President Clinton, who also gets lavished with high job-approval ratings despite
egregious personal acts.
-- Maureen Dowd, "Streetcar Named Betrayal.", New York Times, February 24, 1999
Egregious derives from Latin egregius, separated or chosen from the herd, from e-, ex-, out of, from + grex, greg-, herd, flock. Egregious was formerly used with words importing a good quality (that which was distinguished "from the herd" because of excellence), but now it is joined with words having a bad sense. It is related to congregate (to "flock together," from con-, together, with + gregare, to assemble, from grex); segregate (from segregare, to separate from the herd, from se-, apart + gregare); and gregarious (from gregarius, belonging to a flock).
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for egregious
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