Word of the Day for Wednesday May 17, 2006 arrant

arrant \AR-unt\, adjective:Thoroughgoing; downright; out-and-out; confirmed; extreme; notorious.

• More deplorable is his arrant and compulsive hypocrisy . . . Under all the chest hair, he was a hollow man.-- J. D. McClatchy, review of Crux: The Letters of James Dickey, New York Times, December 19, 1999
• I think a pilot would be a most arrant coward, if through fear of bad weather he did not wait for the storm to break but sank his ship on purpose.-- Georges Minois, History Of Suicide translated by Lydia Cochrane
• The moon's an arrant thief,And her pale fire she snatches from the sun.-- Shakespeare, Timon of Athens
• The entire story is a load of arrant nonsense.-- Victor Pelevin, Buddha's Little Finger translated by Andrew Bromfield

Arrant was originally a variant spelling of errant, meaning "wandering." It was first applied to vagabonds, as an arrant (or errant) rogue or thief, and hence passed gradually into its present sense. It ultimately derives from Latin iter, "a journey."