cardinal
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\n \n Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 27, 2024 is:\n \n
\n \n\n cardinal • \\KAHRD-nul\\ • adjective
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Cardinal is an adjective used to describe things\u2014usually abstract things such as rules or principles\u2014that are of basic or main importance. The word is also used, especially in the phrase \u201ccardinal sin,\u201d with the meaning \u201cvery serious or grave.\u201d
\n\n// \u201cSeek out multiple sources\u201d is a cardinal rule of good news reporting.
\n\n// The four cardinal points on a compass are North, South, East, and West.
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\u201cThe cardinal rule of stargazing is going somewhere dark\u2014the darker the skies, the better the view.\u201d \u2014 Stefanie Waldek, Travel + Leisure, 11 Aug. 2023
\n \n \n\n Did you know?
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Mathematics, religion, ornithology\u2014everything seems to hinge on cardinal. As a noun, cardinal has important uses in all three of the aforementioned realms of human inquiry; as an adjective cardinal describes things of basic or main importance, suggesting that outcomes turn or depend on them. Both adjective and noun trace back to the Latin adjective cardinalis, meaning \u201cserving as a hinge,\u201d and further to the noun cardo, meaning \u201chinge.\u201d Since the 12th century, cardinal has been used as a noun referring to a fundamentally important clergyman of the Roman Catholic Church, ranking only below the pope. (The clergyman's red robes gave the familiar North American songbird its name.) By the 1300s cardinal was also being used as the adjective we know today, to describe abstract things such as principles or rules (as opposed to, say, red wheelbarrows) upon which so much depends.
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