The Word of the Day for April 20

ab initio \ab-uh-NISH-ee-oh\ adverb : from the beginning

Example sentence:
"Under Pennsylvania law, a life-insurance policy that would have been issued at a higher premium if the insured had supplied the correct smoking information was void ab initio...." (_The National Law Journal_, March 4, 1991)

adopted at the end of the 16th century directly from Latin, and it translates, unsurprisingly, as "from the beginning." ("Initio" is a form of the noun "initium," meaning "beginning," which gave rise to such English words as "initial," "initiate," and "initiative.") "Ab initio" frequently appears in legal contexts, as in example sentence. Recently, people have also begun using "ab initio" as an adjective meaning "starting from or based on first principles" (as in "predicted from ab initio calculations").