Wordsmith.org's A.Word.A.Day

What is linctus anyway?

Medical terms are being featured this week on Wordsmith.org's A.Word.A.Day blog. The blog helps those who like to increase their vocabulary. Pronunciation, meaning, etymology, and usage are all given for each word of the day. This may be helpful for high school students studying for their SAT's or ACT's as well as the average adult wishing to add to their lexicon. I wonder if blogs like this are mentioned in study books for these tests.

At the bottom of the page for each word of the day is a thought for today. These thoughts have nothing to do with the word of the day. Linctus' thought of the day is a quote by Cicero: "It was our own moral failure and not any accident of chance, that while preserving the appearance of the Republic we lost its reality." Since linctus is "a syrupy liquid medicine, especially for treating coughs," no obvious connection (such as using the word in the quote) can be found. Stretching it a bit, one could make a connection--the Romans liquid-coated the Republic's situation by ignoring their real problems as long as they could. I don't think the authors of the site were really trying to make such a connection. This being said, I'm not sure why it is included on the word's page. Perhaps the authors did a bit of research on people who generally utilize sites such as theirs and found a thought of the day something to their liking as well as a word of the day. Or maybe they just didn't feel like making more webpages to cover a thought of the day alone.