Daily Words Challenge: 

Day-2

Aorta

Aorta is a big artery — it’s the biggest one you’ve got. You have the aorta to thank for circulating oxygen-rich blood throughout your body.

The aorta is sometimes called a trunk artery. It begins at the left ventricle of your heart and runs down your abdomen, with other smaller arteries branching off throughout your body. So it sort of looks like the trunk of a tree that supports other branches. The heart pumps the blood flowing through the aorta, which is sent throughout the body. The aorta does all this work even though it’s only about a foot long and an inch in diameter.

Plunge

A plunge is a noun and a verb related to diving, falling, and sinking. A "polar bear plunge" is when people plunge into freezing cold water for charity or, inexplicably, for fun.

Fig. Polar plunge                                      Fig. Taking the plunge

As a noun, plunge means “a brief swim” or “a fall.” As a verb, plunge has a variety of definitions. Plunge can mean “to devote yourself fully," as you might plunge into a job by working day and night. Similarly, if you plunge into a good book, you don't let anything distract you from your reading. Plunge can also mean “fall abruptly.” Someone’s reputation might plunge after a scandal, or the stock market might plunge when investors react to bad news.

Tawny

A color adjective, tawny describes something that is a mix of yellow, orange, and brown colors. A lion has a beautiful tawny coat.

Fig. Towny colour 

Tawny comes from the Anglo-Norman word, taune, which means tanned. Although you might think first of sun tans, which do indeed produce tawny colors in light-skinned people (as long as they don't go straight to lobster red), tan first meant the bark of an oak tree, used to cure leather. It's from the look of tanned leather that we get skin tans and the word tawny.

Pageant

A pageant is an elaborate show or parade that usually depicts a historical or religious event, although these days more people know them as Miss America-type beauty 

contests.

Pageants aren't just for beauty queens — any richly decorated spectacle or ceremony could be considered a pageant. Around Christmas time, many Christian churches put on pageants that reenact the birth of Jesus. The Carnival parades in Brazil represent another type of pageant. And if your school organized a show where students had to act out famous moments in history? That would be a pageant, too.

e.g.

The official tourism agency touted scores of Holy Week events, from fishing tournaments to beauty pageants

Edify

To edify is to help someone 

understand whether it is books that edify those who want to learn a new language or the explanations that hang beside paintings at a museum that edify visitors who aren't familiar with the artist.

If you know that the noun edifice is a synonym for building, you may wonder what the related verb edify has to do with understanding. You can think of something that edifies as the building blocks of what might become a lifelong interest, like an elementary school teacher who edifies the student who becomes an Abraham Lincoln scholar, or an activity you eventually master, like the beginners' lessons that edify new ice skaters.

Unfettered

The adjective unfettered describes something or someone uninhibited and unrestrained. If you write mysteries novels for a living you probably turn your unfettered imagination to murder and mayhem.

Unfettered comes from the Old English root word fetor, which was a chain or shackle for the feet. Un- means "not," so originally the word literally meant "not chained or shackled." Today there isn't much real shackling going on, so the adjective unfettered mainly describes something that is free or unrestrained. You'll see such uses as unfettered emotions, unfettered stock market growth, and unfettered speech.