Word of the Day:
extremity
What It Means
The most extreme or furthest point of something.
An extreme measure.
Guillain–Barré syndrome causes one to not be able to move one’s extremities.
Extremity in Context
“Congestive Chills.—Give from ten to fifteen drops of spirits of turpentine in a wineglass of toddy. Make a liniment of equal parts of turpentine and camphor. With this rub the spine, chest and extremities well; but not enough to blister. Rub the extremities until reaction takes place. A cloth...”
Did You Know?
From Middle English extremite, from Old French extremité, from Latin extrēmitātem (“extremity; border, perimeter; ending”), from extrēmīs (“furthest, extreme”) + -itās (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *-teh₂ts (suffix forming nouns indicating a state of being); see extreme. Extrēmīs is derived from exter (“external, outward”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁eǵʰs (“out”)) + -issimus (superlative suffix) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *-is- (comparative suffix) + *-(t)m̥mo- (absolutive case suffix)).
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: extremity (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “extremity.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/extremity. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
