emprise

<font size="-1" face="arial, helvetica"> <p> <strong> <font color="#000066">Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 12, 2021 is:</font> </strong> </p> <p> <strong>emprise</strong> &#149; \em-PRYZE\&nbsp; &#149; <em>noun</em><br /> <p><strong>:</strong> an adventurous, daring, or chivalric enterprise</p> </p> <p> <strong>Examples:</strong><br /> <p>"But perhaps he was the only one courageous enough to voice an opinion that others might have shared, but were afraid to say, that this whole quixotic <em>emprise</em> had been a bad idea, that they had been fools to attempt an escape." — <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=ZHAqDwAAQBAJ&amp;pg=PA203&amp;lpg=PA203&amp;dq=%22But+perhaps+he+was+the+only+one+courageous+enough+to+voice+an+opinion%22&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=MS-6u_CUVR&amp;sig=ACfU3U1mQ_oV6vZl6_NiKZoQ0-QqmHrNUg&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwi1i-2RooTxAhWRAZ0JHb2yAgAQ6AEwAXoECAIQAw#v=onepage&amp;q=%22But%20perhaps%20he%20was%20the%20only%20one%20courageous%20enough%20to%20voice%20an%20opinion%22&amp;f=false">John D. Lukacs, <em>Escape From Davao</em>, 2010</a></p> <p>"Applied to any other creature than the Leviathan—to an ant or a flea—such portly terms might justly be deemed unwarrantably grandiloquent. But when Leviathan is the text, the case is altered. Fain am I to stagger to this <em>emprise</em> under the weightiest words of the dictionary." — <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Moby_Dick/cyokAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&amp;gbpv=1&amp;dq=%22Applied+to+any+other+creature+than+the+Leviathan+%22&amp;pg=PA427&amp;printsec=frontcover">Herman Melville, <em>Moby Dick</em>, 1851</a></p> </p> <p> <strong>Did you know?</strong><br /> <p>Someone who engages in emprises undertakes much, and the word became established in English with the chivalrous undertakings of brave knights. Fourteenth-century author Geoffrey Chaucer used <em>emprise</em> to describe one such knight in "The Franklin's Tale" (one of the stories in <em>The Canterbury Tales</em>)