Word of the Day for Tuesday, August 2, 2011
entelechy \en-TEL-uh-kee\, noun:
1. A realization or actuality as opposed to a potentiality.
2. In vitalist philosophy, a vital agent or force directing growth and life.
The entelechy of the B.O.'s debt limit deal will have repercussions on all taxpayers for decades to come!
--Spy Maker, JSA's Blog
It must gratify a man to evolve so perfectly concomitantly with his years, to write patriarchally when he is old, to be so complete an entelechy .-- Kenneth Burke, Here & Elsewhere: The Collected Fiction of Kenneth Burke
The vast realm of natural entelechy is virtually unknowable, but we already have on the books more information than any poet can use.-- Herbert A. Leibowitz, Parnassus: Twenty Years of Poetry In Review
Entelechy is built from the Greek roots telos "goal" andech "to have."
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