This week we continue our vocabulary-building series, “The Closing Word.” Each week we provide a new word to help build your vocabulary and show you an example of how to use it.
This week’s closing word:
ken
Pronounced: (KEN)
Noun:
1. range of what one can know or understand
2. the range of vision
From Vocabulary.com: “Ken is rarely used today outside of the phrase, “beyond one’s ken.” It goes all the way back, however, to Proto Indo-European, the reconstructed ancestor of most European, Near Eastern, and South Asian languages. Coming from the root *gno- “to know,” ken has many relatives in modern English such as ‘incognito’, ‘cunning’, and ‘know’ itself.”
Example:
“The seller wanted to know how much it would cost to replace the home’s foundation, but I had to admit a sound estimate of such a complicated repair was beyond my ken.”
