It's the Word of the Day podcast for March 24th.

Today's word is garble, spelled G-A-R-B-L-E. Garble is a verb. To garble something, such as a word or name or message message is to cause it to be unclear or distorted.

This type of garbling can be the result of an accident, ignorance, or a transmission error.

Garble can also mean to so alter or distort as to create a wrong impression or change the meaning.

Here's the word used in a sentence from the Washington Post.

Noisy environments and interruptions garbled the audio or led to the services transcribing

voices of people in the office who weren't in our meeting. Garble is a word with a spicy

history and we're not just saying that to curry favor with gastronomes.

It's presumed that this word was passed from Arabic to Mediterranean Europe through trade in

eastern spices and was first introduced into English from the Anglo-French verb Garbole,

used for the action of sifting out impurities such as dust, dirt, or husks from spices.

In the 15th century, the English garble carried this same meaning as well as to cull,

that is, to sort or pick out the best parts of something.

If these origins seem curious given garble's now more common meanings of,

to so alter or distort as to create a wrong impression... If these origins seem curious, given garbils now more common meanings of,

to so alter or distort as to create a wrong impression,

and to cause to be unclear or confusing, to introduce error into,

consider that one way of garbling someone's story,

is to take bits and pieces out of context.

With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.

Visit Miriamwebster.com today for definitions, wordplay, and trending word lookups.