Word for the Week: Weal

[TotallyOz]

Here is the word for this week:

weal \WEEL\, noun:

1. Well-being, prosperity, or happiness.

2. A raised mark on the surface of the body produced by a blow.

3. (Obsolete:) the state or body politic.

Our difference of opinion amounts to this, that you make the mainspring self-interest, while I suppose that interest in the common weal is bound to exist in every man of a certain age of achievement.

-- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

The Prime Minister's recent call on physicians to be more mindful about the health needs of the poor may have come from a genuine concern for the weal of the large swathes of people who fall under that head.

-- Nerun Yakub, "Calling on physicians to perform better," Financial Express, October, 2010

Weal shares the Old English root wela with welfare and a host of other English words. The ultimate source in Proto-Indo-European is wel-, which is also the ancestor of words related to will.

[Lucky]

Lucky was being a bit of a curmudgeon that week. Please ignore as I have apologized.

[TotallyOz]

Lucky was being a bit of a curmudgeon that week. Please ignore as I have apologized.

LOL I was only teasing. But, thank you for using the word curmudgeon.

[MsGuy]

Curmudgeon \ kur-MUDJ-uhn \ noun

1. a bad tempered, difficult, cantankerous person.

2. a surly or miserly person.

I wouldn't go that far. Cranky at times, maybe...