It's Merriam-Webster's word of the day for March 9th. Today's word is germane spelled G-E-R-M-L-G-E-R-M-N-A-G-G-E-N-L-G-E-N-L-G-G-G-N-L-G-G-G-N-L-G-G-R-M-A-N-E.

Germain is an adjective.

It's a formal synonym of the word relevant that describes something related to a subject in an appropriate way.

Here's the word used in a sentence from Forbes by Abiola Salami.

Corporate retreats aren't just for fun and games. They are for tackling germane issues that are critical to the success of any such organization.

Wert thou a leopard, thou wert germane to the lion. So wrote Shakespeare in his five-act tragedy,

Timon of Athens, using an old and now obsolete sense of the word germane meaning closely akin.

Germain comes to us from the middle English word germane meaning having the same

parents.

An early noun sense of germane also referred specifically to children of the same parents.

Today something said to be germane is figuratively related in that it is relevant or fitting to something

else. As when music critic Amanda Petrucich wrote of an album by the chicks, Gaslighter is brasher and more pop oriented than anything

the band has done before.

Part of this shift feels germane to our era.

The idea of genre, as it applies to contemporary music, is growing less and

less relevant, but it also feels like a final repudiation of country music and of a

community that mostly failed to support or to understand one of its biggest acts.

With your Word of the Day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.

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