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Posts Tagged ‘grammar’

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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Solecism

Posted by kazvorpal on October 4, 2009


Surely there is no fitter solecistic archetype than Huck Fin.

We said there warn't no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don't. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.

Solecism (plural Solecisms)

n. A grammatical mistake or absurdity, or even simply a non-standard language usage.

  • We don’t need no education! (Pink Floyd’s infamous double-negative self-refutation.)
  • This is just between you and I. (Hypercorrection to avoid the common, nonstandard “you and me” form in the subject of sentences…in this case, “me” would have been correct, the standard pronoun for the object of a preposition.)
  • Surely there is no fitter solecistic archetype than Huck Finn. (While fitter is a valid construction, the grammatical norm in English is to say “more fitting” — an example of how valid language can still be a solecism.)

Etymology:
In ancient Greece, the colony of Soli in Sicily spoke a very corrupted version of Greek, and came to be seen as a model of silly language usage.

Posted in Grammar / Syntax | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

 
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