preeminent

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 17, 2009 is: preeminent • \pre-EM-uh-nunt\ • adjective : having paramount rank, dignity, or importance : outstanding, supreme Examples: Carrie considered herself lucky to have one of the country’s preeminent novelists as her writing professor. Did you know? What is noteworthy about the following sentence? "Mount McKinley is a prominent eminence in the Alaskan landscape." You very likely recognized two words that are closely related to "preeminent" -- "prominent" and "eminence." All three words are rooted in the Latin verb stem "-minēre," meaning "to stand out." But did you note as well the related word "mount"? Not too surprisingly, "-minēre" is related to "mons," the Latin word for "mountain." That relationship leads us in turn to "paramount," a word closely related in meaning to "preeminent." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.