This post is in response to Heena Rathore P.’s Word of the Week (WOW). This weekly challenge is a great way of improving your vocabulary. If you wish to participate, simply create a post with your word and leave a link in a comment on Heena’s WOW post.

Here’s my WOW for this week:

Word
nascent

Pronunciation
nas-cent / năs′ənt / nā′sənt

Part of Speech
Adjective

Related Forms
adjective: unnascent
nouns: nascence, nascency

Meaning
1) Coming into existence, emerging, beginning to develop.

2) Chemistry of or relating to the state of a chemical element at the moment it is set free from one of its compounds

3) Chemistry (of an element or simple compound, especially hydrogen) created within the reaction medium in the atomic form and having a high activity

Word Origin
1625-25 – From the Latin nāscēns, nāscent-,  the present participle of nāscī, meaning ‘to be born’, ‘arise’

Synonyms
beginning, budding, burgeoning, dawning, developing, evolving, incipient

Antonyms
dying, shriveling, withering

Use in a Sentence
1) The garden came alive with nascent plants pushing through damp earth.

Nascent daffodils – I took this photo back in January and forgot to post it on my blog!

2) The nascent kingdoms of fifth and sixth century Britain were in a constant state of flux.

British Kingdoms in Early 6th Century

British Kingdoms in Mid-6th Century

I thought about writing some sentences using the chemistry definitions of nascent, but science is not really an area I’m knowledgeable on! I’d probably get the facts wrong! I did spend quite a while playing spot-the-difference between the two maps, though…