Word of the Day

Saturday November 28, 2009

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inclement [in-KLEM-uhnt]

adjective

1. Rough; harsh; stormy; as, inclement weather.
2. Showing little or no mercy; cruel.

• Like other farmers throughout the region, Butch Botticello, Ms. Oechsler's father, considers it a minor miracle that there is any squash at all. Plagued with inclement weather, disease and complications from both, farms throughout Connecticut, New Jersey and New York generally suffered one of the worst, if not the worst, growing season in memory.
  Jan Ellen Spiegel, "Closing Out a Season Farmers Want to Forget", New York Times, Nov 15, 2009
• He often had to remain calm while navigating The Hump, where flying through inclement weather was about as routine as losing radio contact with friendly voices, and the pilots weren't necessarily safe on the ground, where they were targets of air raids by Japanese bombers.
  Geoff Fox, "SILVER WINGS", Tampa Tribune, Nov 11, 2009
• Ducks love to nest in stacks, and I have known a pinioned bird work her way up the side of a stack and make her nest fifteen feet from the ground. In stacks birds can burrow so deep that no weather, however inclement, can damage the eggs.
  Captain W. Coape Oates, Wild Ducks - How to Rear and Shoot Them (1905)

Origin of the Word

Inclement , approximately 1559, derives Latin inclementem "harsh, unmerciful," from in- "not" + clementem "mild, placid."?