It's the Word of the Day podcast for January 27th.
Today's word is edify, spelled E-D-I-F-Y.
Edify is a verb.
To edify someone is to teach them in a way that improves their mind or character.
Here's the word used in a sentence from The Atlantic by Arthur C. Brooks.
You might be tempted to think that Emerson advocates abandoning all admiration of others.
He does not.
He simply argues for hard-headed discrimination between what is good and true and everything else.
If you are noble, I will love you, he writes.
But if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions.
In other words,
admire noble good people and give your attention only to what edifies and uplifts you.
When you edify someone, you're helping them build character.
This figurative building is key to understanding the history of the word edify.
It is an evolution of the Latin verb edificare,
originally meaning to erect a house and later in late Latin to instruct or improve spiritually.
The word edifice, which usually refers to a building and especially to a large or massive structure,
comes from the same root.
Edificare, in turn, is based on Edis, a Latin word meaning temple.
Edifi shares the spiritual meaning of its late Latin root,