{"id":7445,"date":"2026-10-26T23:16:23","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T23:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=7445"},"modified":"2026-10-26T23:20:03","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T23:20:03","slug":"word-of-the-day-legerity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2026\/10\/26\/word-of-the-day-legerity\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Legerity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today\u2019s word of the day, courtesy of the Words Coach (https:\/\/www.wordscoach.com\/dictionary<\/a>), is legerity<\/em>. Pronounced \/ l\u0259\u02c8d\u0292\u025br \u026a ti \/, with a soft g sound, this noun means \u201cphysical or mental quickness; nimbleness; agility\u201d (https:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/browse\/legerity<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In its Did You Know? section, Merriam-Webster says, \u201cWhen legerity<\/em> first appeared in English in the 1500s, it drew significantly upon the concept of being \u2018light on one’s feet,\u2019 and appropriately so. It is derived from the Middle and Old French legeret\u00e9<\/em> (\u2018lightness\u2019), which was formed from the Old French adjective leger<\/em> (\u2018light in weight\u2019). Leger<\/em> comes from an assumed Vulgar Latin adjective, leviarius<\/em>, a descendent of the older Latin levis<\/em> (\u2018having little weight\u2019). These days, legerity<\/em> can describe a nimbleness of mind as well as of the feet. A cousin of legerity<\/em> in English is legerdemain<\/em>, meaning \u2018sleight of hand\u2019 or \u2018a display of skill or adroitness.\u2019 Legerdemain<\/em> comes from the French phrase leger de main<\/em>, meaning \u2018light of hand\u2019\u201d (https:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/legerity<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One interesting side note: there was no entry for legerity<\/em> on Etymonline.com.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to On This Day, on this date in 1776, \u201cBenjamin Franklin departs for France on a mission to seek French support for the American Revolution\u201d (https:\/\/www.onthisday.com\/events\/october\/26<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Benjamin Franklin was the smartest person in American history. I learned that from my father. His explanation? When just 17 years old, Franklin moved from Boston to Philadelphia. My dad was, of course, from Philadelphia, and he would have been happy to explain to you why the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra was better than the Boston Symphony. My father\u2019s love of Philadelphia is my first connection with Ben Franklin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Franklin was born in Boston, the 10th<\/sup> son of Josiah Franklin, and the son of Josiah\u2019s second wife, Abiah Folger Franklin. This is my second connection to Ben Franklin. My wife\u2019s maiden name is Folger; her parents were third cousins, and they both had the last name Folger. She can trace her ancestry back to Peter Folger, the maternal grandfather of Ben Franklin. Peter Folger came from England to Nantucket Island, one of the earliest settlers on that island. Oh, and Peter Folger\u2019s father was John Folger, Jr., which was my father-in-law\u2019s name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Franklin fled Boston to escape his older brother, to whom he was apprenticed as a printer. He had been to school for two years, but his father couldn\u2019t afford more than that, so he became an autodidact, a person who educates himself. When he was 12, he started his apprenticeship with his older brother and learned how to be a printer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen Benjamin was 15, James founded The New-England Courant, which was the third newspaper founded in Boston. When denied the chance to write a letter to the paper for publication, Franklin adopted the pseudonym of \u2018Silence Dogood\u2019, a middle-aged widow. Mrs. Dogood’s letters were published and became a subject of conversation around town. Neither James nor the Courant’s readers were aware of the ruse, and James was unhappy with Benjamin when he discovered the popular correspondent was his younger brother. Franklin was an advocate of free speech from an early age. When his brother was jailed for three weeks in 1722 for publishing material unflattering to the governor, young Franklin took over the newspaper and had Mrs. Dogood proclaim, quoting Cato’s Letters, \u2018Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech\u2019\u201d (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Benjamin_Franklin<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After spending some time in London, Franklin returned to Philadelphia where he established a discussion group, along the lines of the coffee house discussion groups which had become popular in London. The group, called the Junto, was instrumental in establishing the country\u2019s first public library. Frankin wrote, \u201cA proposition was made by me that since our books were often referr’d to in our disquisitions upon the inquiries, it might be convenient for us to have them altogether where we met, that upon occasion they might be consulted; and by thus clubbing our books to a common library, we should, while we lik’d to keep them together, have each of us the advantage of using the books of all the other members, which would be nearly as beneficial as if each owned the whole\u201d (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Benjamin_Franklin<\/a>). This beginning led to the establishment of the Library Company of Philadelphia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a printer, Franklin published a newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette<\/em>, and the first Deutsch newspaper. He also published books and pamphlets. For instance, \u201cFranklin \u2026 printed Moravian religious books in German. He often visited Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, staying at the Moravian Sun Inn\u201d (ibid.). So there is my third connection to Ben Franklin, since I was born and raised in Bethlehem, PA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of Franklin\u2019s accomplishments:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poor Richard\u2019s Almanack<\/em>, which included many of Franklin\u2019s aphorisms, some of which were borrowed.
The Union Fire Company.
The founding of the American Philosophical Society
Political jobs, like Clerk of Court, member of the Pennsylvania Assembly, and, of course, ambassador to England before the Revolution and to France during the Revolution
Postmaster of Philadelphia
Member of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce
Honorary doctorate, given by Oxford University in 1762 (given to a man who had only two years of organized schooling)
A Scheme for a new Alphabet and a Reformed Mode of Spelling<\/em>, in which he developed a phonetic alphabet for English
Signing the Declaration of Independence and participating in the writing of the US Constitution
And much, much more, including the invention of the Franklin stove, bifocals, and the lightning rod.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Benjamin Franklin was an autodidact, a polymath (a person who knows a lot about a lot of different things), an entrepreneur, a statesman, and a man of great wisdom. He couldn\u2019t have been all those things without legerity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s image is a 1777 portrait of Franklin by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (French, 1725-1805), pastel on paper (https:\/\/www.diplomaticrooms.state.gov\/objects\/portrait-of-benjamin-franklin\/<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s word of the day, courtesy of the Words Coach (https:\/\/www.wordscoach.com\/dictionary), is legerity. Pronounced \/ l\u0259\u02c8d\u0292\u025br \u026a ti \/, with a soft g sound, this noun means \u201cphysical or mental […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7446,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[1029,238,395,1028,284],"class_list":["post-7445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","tag-ben-franklin","tag-dictionary","tag-etymology","tag-legerity","tag-linguistics","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7447,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7445\/revisions\/7447"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}