• inure •
Pronunciation: in-yur • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Verb
Meaning: 1. To become accustomed to something undesirable, to habituate to the undesirable. 2. (Law) To come into effect, become effective.
Notes: If you ever need a sophisticated word meaning specifically "to slowly get used to something undesirable", this is the word for you. The action noun is inurement, but the participles, inuring and inured , serve double service as adjectives. One even has a quality noun, inuredness.
In Play: This word is a lovelier way of saying 'get used to' or 'become accustomed to': "After inuring to collards and grits, Marvin grew to enjoy his new home in the South." The legal sense of this word sometimes raises its lovely head in our general vocabularies: "Within a year of his father's fortune inuring to him, Harry Wormser-Goode had squandered it all."
Word History: Today's Good Word is a reduction of the phrase '(put) in ure' "(put) in use, practice", where ure is the English rendition of Old French uerve "work" (today œuvre). Uerve is what Old French made of Latin opera "work, effort, service", based on the PIE word op- "to work, perform", source also of Sanskrit apas- "work, religious act", Latin opus, operis "work", Icelandic æfing "practice", German üben "to exercise, practice", Dutch oefenen "to exercise, practice", Danish and Norwegian øve "to train, practice, rehearse" and Swedish öva "practice, train, rehearse". (Now for a belated note of gratitude to Katy Brezger [alias Mark Bailey] for suggesting today's lovely Good Word back in 2007—we seldom forget here at alphaDictionary.)
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