Word of the Day for Monday May 2, 2005 supplicate \SUP-luh-kayt\, intransitive verb: To make a humble and earnest petition; to pray humbly. transitive verb: 1. To seek or ask for humbly and earnestly. 2. To make a humble petition to; to beseech. Lehi's list of enemies was long and broad, including not only the British and the Arabs, but respected Jewish leaders like David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir, whom they dismissed as weaklings and compromisers prepared to supplicate before the aristocratic count. --Tod Hoffman, "Count (Folke) Bernadotte's folly," [1]Queen's Quarterly, December 22, 1996 Their ambassadors would plead, supplicate, cajole, threaten, lobby, or bribe the bureaucrats who were administering the licenses and quotas. --Zafar U. Ahmed, "India's economic reforms," [2]Competitiveness Review, January 1, 1999 In this formula, practitioners of religion are more or less powerless over the supernatural beings with whom they deal; they can only supplicate those beings for favours and then await their response. --Ronald Hutton, "Paganism and Polemic," [3]Folklore, April 2000 _________________________________________________________ Supplicate derives from the past participle of Latin supplicare, from supplex, "entreating for mercy." The noun form is supplication. References 1. http://www.queensu.ca/quarterly/ 2. http://ecobweb.ecob.iup.edu/asc/cr.htm 3. http://www.folklore-society.com/ Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=9&q=supplicate