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misgiving

On exam day in Korea, air-traffic control holds every takeoff for the listening section

Misgiving is a feeling of doubt or apprehension, from misgive — mis-, wrongly, plus give in its former sense of suggest — and on record since 1582. It is the second of A.Word.A.Day’s “words with scene-stealing examples”, and the example is Gideon Lewis-Kraus in the New Yorker on the Suneung, Korea’s university entrance exam: the stock market opens late, students running behind get police-motorcycle escorts, and during the English listening section air-traffic control suspends all takeoffs and landings.

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