Today’s word of the day is the noun latration, which is “barking,” usually of a dog. It’s a rare word but one used with distinction in this most apt description of political argument: “porcine squealing, answered always by counter-latration.” The verb, latrate, and its synonyms allatrate and oblatrate, come to us from the Latin latratus, the past participle of latrare, ‘to bark.’ Latrant, of course, is “barking or clamoring noisily” as used in Matthew Green’s The Spleen in 1737: “Whose latrant stomachs oft molest / The deep-laid plans their dreams suggest.”