Posted by kazvorpal on January 7, 2011
Chthulu, on the Nefandous Southpark
Nefandous
Unspeakable.
A most severe pejorative
Examples:
Then the earth
In birth nefandous Coeus life produced
And Iapetus and Typhoeus dire
And that bad brotherhood which joined in league
To abolish heaven
— Dante Alighieri, Inferno (1308)
Only the bricks of the chimney, the stones of the cellar, some mineral and metallic litter here and there, and the rim of that nefandous well.
— H.P. Lovecraft, The Colour out of Space (1927)
No Topsman to your Tarpeia! This thing, Mister Abby, is nefand.
— James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)
Etymology:
- In Latin, ne = not, fandus = to speak
Posted in Grammar / Syntax, history, poetry | Tagged: chthulu, dante, dante alighieri, divine comedy, english, etymology, finnegans wake, h p lovecraft, high vocabulary, iapetus, inferno, james joyce, joyce, latin, lexicon, lovecraft, nefand, nefandous, religion, south park, southpark, the colour out of space, vocabulary, vocabulary expansion, vocabulary words, word of the day, words, words of the day, wotd | Leave a Comment »
Posted by kazvorpal on August 5, 2010
Polymath
One with many skills or fields of knowledge; a renaissance man
Examples:
A Catholic sense of sin and a social sense of disaster, a fascination with the polymathic and polyglot artist and the strange and often gross and unbidden sources of art. Nor had Burgess taught languages or studied Joyce for nothing…
— Malcolm Bradbury, The Modern British Novel (1993)
You could give Aristotle a tutorial. And you could thrill him to the core of his being. Aristotle was an encyclopedic polymath, an all time intellect. Yet not only can you know more than him about the world.
— Richard Dawkins, The Richard Dimbleby Lecture (1996)
Etymology:
A classical greek word, its parts are poly, many, and mathes, learned. The word “mathematics” does come from the same root word, as understanding numbers was once a sign of being educated.
Posted in history, Knowledge | Tagged: ancient greek, anthony burgess, aristotle, dawkins, greek, high vocabulary, joyce, lexicon, malcolm bradbury, mathematics, polymath, renaissance men, richard dawkins, vocabulary, wotd | Leave a Comment »
High-Vocabulary Word of the Day 