shrive

<font size="-1" face="arial, helvetica"> <p> <strong> <font color="#000066">Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 10, 2021 is:</font> </strong> </p> <p> <strong>shrive</strong> &#149; \SHRYVE\&nbsp; &#149; <em>verb</em><br /> <p><strong>1 :</strong> to administer the sacrament of <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reconciliation?show=0&amp;t=1414588156">reconciliation</a> to</p> <p><strong>2 :</strong> to free from guilt</p> </p> <p> <strong>Examples:</strong><br /> <p>"Once every three months, Pancho took his savings and drove into Monterey to confess his sins, to do his penance, and be <em>shriven</em> and to get drunk, in the order named." — <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Pastures_of_Heaven/GQQ7TaTnU1EC?hl=en&amp;gbpv=1&amp;dq=%22,+Pancho+took+his+savings+and+drove%22&amp;pg=PT54&amp;printsec=frontcover">John Steinbeck, <em>The Pastures of Heaven</em>, 1932</a></p> <p>"Each Saturday he confessed humbly at St Francis' Church, then <em>shrived</em> penitents for long hours at the cathedral, never stinting his homilies." — <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mannix-daniel-7478">James Griffin, <em>The Australian Dictionary of Biography</em>, 1986</a></p> </p> <p> <strong>Did you know?</strong><br /> <p>We wouldn't want to give the history of <em>shrive</em> short shrift, so here's the whole story. It began when the Latin verb <em>scribere</em> (meaning "to write") found its way onto the tongues of certain Germanic peoples who brought it to Britain in the early Middle Ages. Because it was often used for laying down directions or rules in writing, Old English speakers used their form of the term, <em>scrīfan</em>, to mean "to prescribe or impose." The Church adopted <em>scrīfan</em> to refer to the act of assigning penance to sinners and, later, to hearing confession and administering absolution. Today <em><a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shrift">shrift</a></em>, the noun form of <em>shrive<