Word of the Day

Tuesday June 29, 2010

incommunicado [in-kuh-myoo-nih-KAH-doh]

adjective

Without the means or right to communicate.

Its most controversial proposal, however, has gone nowhere. The company proposed cutting power to huge parts of the backcountry during dry, windy weather. The PUC rejected that plan after people complained that they would be left incommunicado and without water or power when the risk of wildfire is highest.

Onell R Soto, "SDG&E reaches accord in wildfires", The San Diego Union - Tribune, Apr 23, 2010
The Montreal woman had been on a training-school boat for 70 days. She was supposed to have been back in Chile a month earlier. Instead, the former banker languished on a ship with a hostile captain, incommunicado with the outside world.

Ingrid Peritz, "After 70 days 'powerless' and adrift with a hostile captain", The Globe and Mail, Apr 17, 2010
However, he was subjected to considerable petty persecution, and once he was flung into jail without charge and held incommunicado. His wife went to Washington to plead his case before President Johnson, who treated her with a great deal less than courtesy, and then before General Grant, who promptly gave her a written order for her husband's release.

H. Beam Piper (1904 - 1964) An American science fiction author. Rebel Raider (1950)

Origin of the Word

Incommunicado, approximately 1844, derives from Spanish incomunicado, past particple of incomunicar "deprive of communication," from in- "not" + comunicar "communicate," from Latin communicare "to share, impart."