High-Vocabulary Word of the Day

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Archive for August, 2016

Obloquy — Shame or Criticism

Posted by kazvorpal on August 31, 2016


 

Obloquy

Obloquy

Shame, or condemnation; especially by a group of people

Examples
“Our dangers, as it seems to me, are not from the outrageous but from the conforming; not from those who rarely and under the lurid glare of obloquy upset our moral complaisance, or shock us with unaccustomed conduct, but from those, the mass of us, who take their virtues and their tastes, like their shirts and their furniture, from the limited patterns which the market offers.”
Learned Hand, “The Preservation of Personality” (1927)

“The desire to do something that shall benefit the world, when neither praise nor obloquy will reach us where we sleep soundly in the grave, is the noblest ambition entertained by man.”
Grand Pontiff, Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871)

“Proudhon, conceiving a natural law of balance operating within society, rejects authority as an enemy and not a friend of order, and throws back at the authoritarians the accusations leveled at anarchists; in the process he adopts the title he hopes to have cleared of obloquy.”
George Woodcock, Anarchism, a History of Libertarian Ideas (1962)

Etymology:
From Latin, ob (against) + loqui (to speak). Like “to speak against”. Easy to remember, because it’s the same root as the word “loquatious” (talkative).

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Hobbledehoy — An Awkward Boy

Posted by kazvorpal on August 25, 2016


Hobbledehoy — High Vocabulary Word of the Day

Hobbledehoy

An awkward boy, especially adolescent

Examples:

“Nothing but infantilism — the erotic visions of a hobbledehoy behind the barn.”
Henry Seidel Canby, “Mr. O’Hara and the Vulgar School”, a Saturday Review of Appointment in Samarra

“The son stayed with the third Professor for one more year, and when he came home again and his father asked, ‘My dimwitted hobbledehoy, what have you learnt?'”
Lemony Snicket, Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Biography

“A man rarely carries his shyness past the hobbledehoy period. Even if his own inward strength does not throw it off, the rubbings of the world generally smooth it down.”
Jerome K. Jerome, The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Etymology:
This is a very iffy one, with completely conflicting origins documented here and there. “hob” is a word used elsewhere to refer to a clown or troublemaker, as in hobgoblin. de hey translates as “of the hedge”, used to mean “wild or feral”. These may comprise some of its roots.

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Refulgent — Shining

Posted by kazvorpal on August 22, 2016


REFULGENT adjective Brightly shining, glowing radiantly From brightening fields of ether fair-disclosed, Child of the Sun, refulgent Summer comes... — James Thomson, The Seasons, Summer (1727)

REFULGENT
adjective
Brightly shining, glowing radiantly
From brightening fields of ether fair-disclosed,
Child of the Sun, refulgent Summer comes…
— James Thomson, The Seasons, Summer (1727)

Refulgent

Brightly shining, glowing radiantly

Examples:

“Celestial choir! enthron’d in realms of light,
Columbia’s scenes of glorious toils I write.
While freedom’s cause her anxious breast alarms,
She flashes dreadful in refulgent arms.”
Phillis Wheatley, letter to George Washington (1775)

“God is more to me than a grand and solitary Being,
though refulgent with infinite perfections.”
Horace Mann, Congressional speech (1849)

“From brightening fields of ether fair-disclosed,
Child of the Sun, refulgent Summer comes”
James Thomson, The Seasons, Summer (1727)

Etymology:

Refulgent comes from the Latin word for “flashing”, fulgere.

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