SHANE'S Excellent New Words: Anathema.

Now I'm hiding in Honduras
I'm a desperate man
Send lawyers, guns and money
The shit has hit the fan
-- Warren Zevon

Welcome to another installment of "Shane's Excellent New Words," which will be a regular Wednesday feature at NA Confidential.

Why?

Because a healthy vocabulary isn't about trying to show you're smarter than the rest. To the contrary, it's about selecting the right word and using it correctly, whatever one's pay grade or station in life.

Even municipal corporate attorneys are eligible for this enlightening expansion of personal horizons. This week's word is anathema.

anathema
[uh-nath-uh-muh]

noun, plural anathemas.

1. a person or thing detested or loathed.
2. a person or thing accursed or consigned to damnation or destruction.
3. a formal ecclesiastical curse involving excommunication.
4. any imprecation of divine punishment.
5. a curse; execration.

Origin of anathema

1520-30; < Latin < Greek: a thing accursed, devoted to evil, orig. devoted, equivalent to ana (ti) thé (nai) to set up + -ma noun suffix

I'm afraid we've already exceeded city government's attention span, so let's provide an example of "anathema" in a sentence, as glimpsed in yesterday's post, Maybe I'm a Bud Light Lime Leftist.

At a moment when Martin Luther King, Jr., is on many of our minds, Sanders' unbowed debate performance serves as a fresh reminder of the power of an individual who displays and defends honorable humanism in politics. To Hillary Clinton, it is anathema. If Democrats insist on making her their nominee out of some polluted sense of loyalty, it will eventually become anathema to them, too.

We knew it was bothering him, but don't worry. We'll define them all in turn.