emprise
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 12, 2021 is: emprise \em-PRYZE\ noun : an adventurous, daring, or chivalric enterprise Examples: "But perhaps he was the only one courageous enough to voice an opinion that others might have shared, but were afraid to say, that this whole quixotic emprise had been a bad idea, that they had been fools to attempt an escape." — [John D. Lukacs, Escape From Davao, 2010](https://books.google.com/books?id=ZHAqDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA203&lpg=PA203&dq=%22But+perhaps+he+was+the+only+one+courageous+enough+to+voice+an+opinion%22&source=bl&ots=MS-6uCUVR&sig=ACfU3U1mQoV6vZl6NiKZoQ0-QqmHrNUg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi1i-2RooTxAhWRAZ0JHb2yAgAQ6AEwAXoECAIQAw#v=onepage&q=%22But%20perhaps%20he%20was%20the%20only%20one%20courageous%20enough%20to%20voice%20an%20opinion%22&f=false) "Applied to any other creature than the Leviathan—to an ant or a flea—such portly terms might justly be deemed unwarrantably grandiloquent. But when Leviathan is the text, the case is altered. Fain am I to stagger to this emprise under the weightiest words of the dictionary." — [Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851](https://www.google.com/books/edition/MobyDick/cyokAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Applied+to+any+other+creature+than+the+Leviathan+%22&pg=PA427&printsec=frontcover) Did you know? Someone who engages in emprises undertakes much, so it's no surprise that emprise descends from the Anglo-French word emprendre, meaning "to undertake." It's also no surprise that emprise became established in English during the 13th century, a time when brave knights engaged in many a chivalrous undertaking. Fourteenth-century author Geoffrey Chaucer used emprise to describe one such knight in "The Franklin's Tale" (one of the stories in The Canterbury Tales): "Ther was a knyght that loved and dide his payne / To serve a lady in his beste wise; / And many labour, many a greet emprise, / He for his lady wroghte er she were wonne."