Word of the Day: July 24, 2025

What It Means

To separate or set apart (someone or something from other persons or things).

To separate (something from other things) in the mind; to discriminate, to distinguish.

Synonym of secrete (“to extract or separate (a substance) from the blood, etc., for excretion or for the fulfilling of a physiological function”).

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Secern in Context

“Often a prize would be awarded to some one dancer who had excelled his fellows. There were, I suppose, "born" Morris-dancers. Now and again one of them, flushed with triumph, would secern himself from his troupe, and would "star" round the country for his livelihood.”

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Did You Know?

PIE word *swé Learned borrowing from Latin sēcernere, the present active infinitive of sēcernō (“to put apart, divide, separate, sever, sunder; (figuratively) to disjoin, dissociate, part; to discern, distinguish; to exclude, pull aside, set aside, reject”), from sē- (prefix meaning ‘apart; aside; away’) + cernō (“to divide, separate; to distinguish, sift; to perceive, see; to comprehend, discern, regard, understand; to decide”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *krey- (“to divide, separate, sift”)). Senses 1.3 and 2.2 (“synonym of secrete”) derive from the use of the Latin word sēcernere to translate Ancient Greek ἀποκρίνειν (apokrínein), the active infinitive participle of ἀποκρίνω (apokrínō, “to set apart, separate; to choose; to reject on inquiry; to answer, reply”).