Word of the Day: assiduous

The word assiduous has appeared in 14 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Oct. 23 in the Opinion essay “If Everyone Gets an A, No One Gets an A” by Tim Donahue:

How might grade inflation’s roiling cloud now be pierced? Do we approach the colleges that purport to favor both mental health and kids who take 10 A.P. exams? Or high schools, which watch these grading trend lines with the dread of sea level rise? We keep treating high school and college as two separate entities, but ultimately, they service the same people, and there needs to be more conversation about what this mess of grades is doing to them.

For now, a modest proposal: Consider the essay that comes in with a promising central idea but lacks support from a few critical moments of the text. It makes a smart but abrupt transition and closes with an interesting connection, a trifle undercooked. With another assiduous go-round, it might become something amazing. But please don’t give this draft an A-minus, the grade that puts so much potential to an early, convenient death. Instead, think of the produce of this student’s deletions and insertions, the music as he riffles through those pages he’ll annotate better next time, the reflective potential of a revision. Grading offers a singular place to teach such lessons of resilience. Instead, consider the B-plus.

Daily Word Challenge

Can you correctly use the word assiduous in a sentence?

Based on the definition and example provided, write a sentence using today’s Word of the Day and share it as a comment on this article. It is most important that your sentence makes sense and demonstrates that you understand the word’s definition, but we also encourage you to be creative and have fun.

If you want a better idea of how assiduous can be used in a sentence, read these usage examples on Vocabulary.com. You can also visit this guide to learn how to use IPA symbols to show how different words are pronounced.

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The Word of the Day is provided by Vocabulary.com. Learn more and see usage examples across a range of subjects in the Vocabulary.com Dictionary. See every Word of the Day in this column.