Word of the Day!

magniloquent [mag-nil-uh-kwuhnt]

adjective:
speaking or expressed in a lofty or grandiose style; pompous; bombastic; boastful

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His star power is based on brains and brawn; he can recite magniloquent phrases while also giving the impression that he could fillet an enemy, Jason Bourne style, armed with only a Bic pen (Jody Rosen, Why Is Matt Damon Shilling for Crypto?, New York Times, February 2022)

The revealing, magniloquent letter is one of more than 1,600 records and documents relating to George IV from the Royal Archives published online for the first time. (Mark Brown, Letters shed light on lovelorn prince who became George IV, The Guardian, October 2019)

In such magniloquent language did the doctor describe the very simple process of fixing a door to the top landing of the house, which gave her the floor to herself. (Edgar Wallace, The Hand of Power)

His magniloquent western name was the moral umbrella upon which he balanced the fine problem of his finances. He was widely respected. (James Joyce, Dubliners)

It was empty, magniloquent, abstract, flatulent, pretentious, confused, and sub-human. I could have wept salt tears. But I couldn't do anything else; the young man wanted a clean heart and a new spirit, not a little top-dressing. (Logan Pearsall Smith, Unforgotten Years)

Origin:

1650s, a back-formation from magniloquence, or else from Latin magniloquentia 'lofty style of language,' from magniloquus 'pompous in talk, vaunting, boastful,' from combining form of magnus 'great' (from PIE root meg- 'great') + -loquus 'speaking,' from loqui 'to speak' (from PIE root tolkw- 'to speak'). Wycliffe (late 14c) translates Latin magniloquam as 'speechy'. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Magnus means 'great' in Latin; loqui is a Latin verb meaning 'to speak.' Combine the two and you get magniloquus, the Latin predecessor of magniloquent. English-speakers started using magniloquent in the 1600s, despite having had its synonym grandiloquent since the 1500s. (Grandiloquent comes from Latin grandiloquus, which combines loqui and grandis, another word for 'great' in Latin.) Today, these synonyms continue to exist side by side and to be used interchangeably, though grandiloquent is the more common of the two. (Merriam-Webster)

bagatelle [bag-uh-tel]

noun:
1 something of little value or importance; a trifle
2 a game played on a board having holes at one end into which balls are to be struck with a cue
3 a short literary or musical piece in light style

Examples:

If anything, the slowly accumulating final chord of the bagatelle could have set up the softly arpeggiated one at the start of 'Twilight Way', the first of the 'Poetic Tone Pictures.' (Joshua Barone, Review: Dvorak’s 'Poetic Tone Pictures’ Makes Its Carnegie Debut, New York Times, February 2023)

Pinball got its start in 18th-century France with the billiardslike tabletop game bagatelle, which used a springlike launcher. (World-ranked pinball wizard is reviving the game in San Antonio with a new startup, san Antonio Express-News, March 2020)

When you are caught in a web of conspiracies, the best of deeds becomes a mere bagatelle, as we find in the fall of Udensi. (Henry Akubuiro, Travails of a Good Samaritan , The Sun Nigeria, March 2021)

Among the most divisive issues in philosophy today is whether there is anything important to be said about the essential nature of truth. Bullshit, by contrast, might seem to be a mere bagatelle. (Jim Holt, Say Anything, The New Yorker, August 2005)

'Overdue; was the title he had decided for it, and its length he believed would not be more than sixty thousand words - a bagatelle for him with his splendid vigor of production. (Jack London, Martin Eden)

The betrayal of one's friends is a bagatelle in the stakes of love, but the betrayal of oneself is a lifelong regret. (Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love)

Then there were the bird cages, the iron hoops, the steel skates, the Queen Anne coal-scuttle, the bagatelle board, the hand organ - all gone, and jewels, too. (Virginia Woolf, 'The Mark on the Wall')

Origin:

1630s, 'a trifle, thing of no importance,' from French bagatelle 'knick-knack, bauble, trinket' (16c.), from Italian bagatella 'a trifle,' which is perhaps a diminutive of Latin baca 'berry,' or from one of the continental words (such as Old French bague 'bundle') from the same source as English bag. As 'a piece of light music,' it is attested from 1827. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

legerdemain [lej-er-duh-meyn]

noun:
1 sleight of hand
2 a display of skill or adroitness

Examples:

In Open Eye's itsy-bitsy performing space, Sass has constructed a set filled with tricks and gimmicks: old-fashioned bulletin boards animate themselves, objects move on their own, characters appear from and disappear to unexpected places. Some of the legerdemain is how'd-they-do-that pieces of stage magic, while other bits are visual distraction. (Dominic P Papatola , Theater review: These 'Red Shoes' can't be tied with a bow. And that's a good thing , Twin Cities, March 2017)

Poirot reacts to all this legerdemain with a disbelieving scowl, even when he can't fully explain the hair-raising tricks his eyes and ears are playing on him. (Justin Chang, Review: With 'A Haunting in Venice,' Kenneth Branagh's Agatha Christie series hits its stride , Los Angeles Times, September 2023)

The magician on stage is all-powerful to the mesmerised audience, pulling the rabbit out of his hat, sawing pretty ladies in half, making members in the audience disappear and a host of other tricks in his legerdemain (Ravi Shankar, Why poll Houdini Prashant Kishor isn't a neta, The New Indian Express, February 2022)

Every little while he would bend down and take hold of the edge of the blanket with the extreme tips of his fingertips, as if to show there was no deception - chattering away all the while - but always, just as I was expecting to see a wonder feat of legerdemain, he would let go the blanket and rise to explain further. (Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad)

He already sang as nobody on this earth had ever sung before; he practised ventriloquism and gave displays of legerdemain so extraordinary that the caravans returning to Asia talked about it during the whole length of their journey. (Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera)

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early 15c, 'conjuring tricks, sleight of hand,' from Old French léger de main 'quick of hand,' literally 'light of hand.' Léger 'light' in weight (Old French legier, 12c) is from Latin levis 'light' (from PIE root legwh- 'not heavy, having little weight'). Main 'hand' is from Latin manus (from PIE root man- 'hand'). (Online Etymology Dictionary)

In Middle French, folks who were clever enough to fool others with fast-fingered illusions were described as leger de main, literally 'light of hand'. English speakers condensed that phrase into a noun when they borrowed it in the 15th century and began using it as an alternative to the older sleight of hand. (That term for dexterity or skill in using one's hands makes use of sleight, an old word from Middle English that derives from an Old Norse word meaning 'sly.') In modern times, a feat of legerdemain can even be accomplished without using your hands, as in, for example, 'an impressive bit of financial legerdemain.' (Merriam-Webster)

sacerdotal [sas-er-doht-l]

adjective:
of, relating to, or characteristic of priests
characterized by belief in the divine authority of the priesthood

Examples:

He seemed indeed a sacerdotal figure - a high priest who offered his own life before accepting the animal's. Every one of us was transfigured by the rite. (Christopher North, Taurine state of grace , The Critic, March 2021 )

After the reading - ‘Neither pray I for these alone...' - one of the ladies was so pleased with the sacerdotal language that she blew me a kiss across the aisle. (Jason Goodwin, 'When someone dies, you can lose a place, as well as a person', Country Life, June 2019)

In the meltdown's aftermath, a small unregulated bank is unusually suspect, especially when operating in a 'sacerdotal-monarchical state established under the 1929 Lateran Treaty' and reporting to an abstract nominee with an ethereal address. Nor can it help that the bank is a market-maker in loaves and fishes. (Matthew Stevenson, The Vatican Bank: In God We Trust?, newgeography, May 2013)

The brand inspires a sacerdotal devotion in many of its workers (its archives contain the papers of one of the atelier's premieres, or heads, who served from 1947 to 1990). (Matthew Schneier, Atop Dior, Balancing Art and Commerce, The New York Times, July 2017)

He would immerse himself in the sacerdotal labor of translation. (Joyce Carol Oates, The Tattooed Girl)

Vixeela herself had at one time been numbered among the virgins but had fled from the temple and from Uzuldaroum several years before the sacerdotal age of release from her bondage. (Clark Ashton Smith, The Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles)

Having fixed upon this, I hired a little bark to Jubo, a place about forty leagues distant from Pate, on board which I put some provisions, together with my sacerdotal vestments, and all that was necessary for saying mass: in this vessel we reached the coast, which we found inhabited by several nations: each nation is subject to its own king; these petty monarchies are so numerous, that I counted at least ten in less than four leagues. (Father Lobo, A Voyage to Abyssinia)

One would almost imagine from the long list that is given of cannibal primates, bishops, arch-deacons, prebendaries, and other inferior ecclesiastics, that the sacerdotal order far outnumbered the rest of the population, and that the poor natives were more severely priest-ridden than even the inhabitants of the papal states. (Herman Melville, Typee)

Origin:

'of or belonging to priests or the priesthood,' c 1400, from Old French sacerdotal and directly from Latin sacerdotalis 'of or pertaining to a priest,' from sacerdos (genitive sacerdotis) 'priest,' literally 'offerer of sacrifices or sacred gifts,' from sacer 'holy' (see sacred) + stem of dare 'to give' (from PIE root do- 'to give'). (Online Etymological Dictionary)

Sacerdotal is one of a host of English words derived from the Latin adjective sacer, meaning 'sacred.' Other words derived from sacer include desecrate, sacrifice, sacrilege, consecrate, sacrament, and even execrable (developed from the Latin word exsecrari, meaning 'to put under a curse'). One surprising sacer descendant is sacrum, referring to the series of five vertebrae in the lower back connected to the pelvis. In Latin this bone was called the os sacrum, or 'holy bone,' a translation of the Greek hieron osteon. (Merriam-Webster)

marcescent [mahr-ses-uhnt]

adjective:
withering but not falling off, as a part of a plant.

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A bonus design tip for gardeners: A row of marcescent trees, although not technically evergreen, makes for an effective, nearly year-round screen. (Margaret Roach, How to Read the Tree Leaves, The New York Times, November 2022)

Another possible benefit to younger, shorter trees is that marcescent leaves appear to help protect against browsing by deer and moose. The leaves are lower in nutrients and more difficult to digest than new buds (which are present throughout the winter). (Susan Pike, Some trees retain leaves all winter long, Seacoastonline, February 2015)

I apologize if the metaphor is a little too on the nose, but the dissolution of a partnership such as marriage, feels marcescent. Sometimes I get mad at myself for hanging on too long to this or that aspect of my dead marriage, but that process just may be protective. (Brandy Renee McCann, Marcescent, Appalbrandy, March 2022)

The parchment-colored leaves riding out the winter - marcescent, he tells her - shining out against the neighboring bare hardwoods. (Richard Powers, The Overstory)

Origin:

'withering, liable to decay, ephemeral,' 1727, from Latin marcescentem (nominative marcescens), present participle of marcescere 'to wither, languish, droop, decay, pine away,' inchoative of marcere 'to wither, droop, be faint,' from Proto-Italic mark-e-, from PIE root merk- 'to decay' (source also of Sanskrit marka- 'destruction, death;' Avestan mareka- 'ruin;' Lithuanian mirkti 'become weak,' merkti 'to soak;' Ukrainian dialect morokva 'quagmire, swamp,' Middle High German meren 'dip bread into water or wine,' perhaps also Middle Irish mraich, Welsh brag 'a sprouting out; malt'). (Online Etymology Dictionary)

perspicacious [pur-spi-key-shuhs]

adjective:
of acute mental vision or discernment; keen

One perspicacious pal did comment: "Another book about Elizabeth? What’s left to say?" (Clare McHugh, 'Q’ is a portrait of Queen Elizabeth unlike any other, The Washington Post, October 2024)

Chris M L Burleigh is a poet with a distinctive and refreshingly light-hearted voice expressed through his viscerally nuanced and at times acutely perspicacious work. (Paul Spalding-Mulcock, Interview With Chris M L Burleigh, Yorkshire Times, October 2021)

I guess if you were so big-picture perspicacious that you established the trick that affects half the answers you might have been able to do it, but most of us toss an answer or two onto a grid when getting started. (Caitlin Lovinger, Back on the Job, The New York Times, March 2018)

It is an unusually perspicacious analytic deduction from inconspicuous clues that we call ratiocination, or more familiarly, the detective instinct. (Carolyn Wells, The Technique of the Mystery Story)

Anthony, the courteous, the subtle, the perspicacious, was drunk each day - in Sammy's with these men, in the apartment over a book, some book he knew, and, very rarely, with Gloria, who, in his eyes, had begun to develop the unmistakable outlines of a quarrelsome and unreasonable woman. (F Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned)

Origin:

"sharp-sighted," also "of acute mental discernment," 1630s, formed as an adjective to perspicacity, from Latin perspicax "sharp-sighted, having the power of seeing through; acute," from perspicere "look through, look closely at," from per "through" (from PIE root per- "forward," hence "through") + specere "look at" (from PIE root spek- "to observe"). (Online Etymology Dictionary)

peregrinate [per-i-gruh-neyt]

verb:
to travel or journey, especially to walk on foot.

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Everywhere on the rim of the island, which I peregrinate with my companionable driver, G Douglas Wijerathna, I see scooters and tuk-tuks ferrying surfers to beaches and breaks, schools and camps. (Chandrahas Choudhury, Sri Lanka's South Coast Is the Next Great Lifestyle Destination, Condé Nast Traveller, March 2024)

For those who like to peregrinate without actually going anywhere, virtual reality is just the ticket, the next best thing to astral projection (something I'm dying to try). (James Wolcott, Sunglasses After Dark, Air Mail, November 2022)

He followed that with 'Wonder Boys,' a witty campus farce in which Chabon's pen continued to peregrinate all over Pittsburgh in prose which still reveled in the many wonders to be discovered here. (Kristofer Collins, Book Reviews: Michael Chabon's 'Moonglow', Pittsburgh Magazine, October 2016)

I go there on the 10th to remain till May; but I am sorry to say I see little hope of my being able to peregrinate to far Provence - all benignant though your invitation be. (Henry James, The Letters of Henry James)

The old showman and his literary coadjutor were already tackling their horses to the wagon, with a design to peregrinate southwest along the seacoast. (Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Seven Vagabonds)

Origin:

'to travel from place to place,' 1590s, from Latin peregrinatus, past participle of peregrinari 'to travel abroad, be alien,' figuratively 'to wander, roam, travel about,' from peregrinus 'from foreign parts, foreigner,' from peregre (adv.) 'abroad,' properly 'from abroad, found outside Roman territory,' from per 'away' + agri, locative of ager 'field, territory, land, country' (from PIE root agro- 'field'). (Online Etymology Dictionary)

We begin our narrative of the linguistic travels of peregrinate with the Latin word peregrinatus, the past participle of peregrinari, which means 'to travel in foreign lands'. The verb is derived from the Latin word for 'foreigner', peregrinus, which was earlier used as an adjective meaning 'foreign.'That term also gave us the words pilgrim and peregrine, the latter of which once meant 'alien' but is now used as an adjective meaning 'tending to wander' and as a noun naming a kind of falcon. (The peregrine falcon is so named because it was traditionally captured during its first flight - or pilgrimage - from the nest.) (Merriam-Webster)

myrmidon [mur-mi-don, -dn]

noun:
faithful follower who carries out orders without question; a subordinate who executes orders unquestioningly or unscrupulously

Examples:

These days Tate's name pops up occasionally in bookstores, never in cafés: he's simply not part of the contemporary discussion. Literary history and her myrmidons, the anthologists, have hacked down his poetic ranks - often to a single poem, 'Ode to the Confederate Dead' - and left the rest to lie where they fell, out of print. (David Yezzi, The violence of Allen Tate, The New Criterion, September 2001)

OK, first of all, George III didn't have myrmidons (Charles P Pierce, This Week In The Laboratories Of Democracy, Esquire, March 2014)

He was merely bored when Thrush tried to distract him with some account of the murder in which he himself was only interested because his myrmidon happened to have discovered the body. (E W Hornung, The Camera Fiend)

His myrmidon on this occasion was a little, red-nosed butler, who waddled about the house after his master, while the latter bounced from room to room like a cracker. (Thomas Love Peacock, Headlong Hall)

'"We are gathered," he ses, "to consider what can be done for the defence of our sainted Brother Lawley, who's in the hands of the myrmidons of the law." (Edgar Wallace, The Man Who Shot the "Favourite" (The Gold Mine))

Origin:

one of a warlike people of ancient Thessaly, legendarily ruled by Achilles and accompanying him to Troy, c. 1400, from Latin Myrmidones (plural), from Greek Myrmidones, Thessalian tribe led by Achilles to the Trojan War, fabled to have been ants changed into men, and often derived from Greek myrmex 'ant' (from PIE morwi- ), but Watkins does not connect them and Klein's sources suggest a connection to Greek mormos 'dread, terror.' Transferred sense of 'faithful unquestioning follower,' often with a suggestion of unscrupulousness, is from c. 1600. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

The Myrmidons, legendary inhabitants of Thessaly in Greece, were known for their fierce devotion to Achilles, the king who led them in the Trojan War. Myrmex means 'ant' in Greek, an image that evokes small and insignificant workers mindlessly fulfilling their duties. Whether the original Myrmidons were given their name for that reason is open to question. The 'ant' association is strong, however. Some say the name is from a legendary ancestor who once had the form of an ant; others say the Myrmidons were actually transformed from ants. In any case, since the 1400s, we've employed myrmidon in its not-always-complimentary, ant-evoking, figurative sense. (Merriam-Webster)

candent [kan-duhnt]

adjective:
glowing from or as if from great heat

Examples:

American education has been an important topic of debate for the past few decades. However, lately it has been a candent subject in several media outlets and schools due to the increasing number of internationals who choose American colleges to pursue higher education. (Micaela Carou-Baldner, Education: Survival of the Fittest, The Current, January 2017)

Now the sky is totally dark and the colors are at their most candent and the crowd is at its most fully invested. (Adam Davies, James Turrell’s 'Skyspace' Opens at Ringling Museum, Sarasota Magazine, December 2013)

The moving floor was patterned in day and night. The low ceiling was fused where the day poured through, became a candent vapour, volatilised. (H M Tomlinson, The Sea and the Jungle)

One sun came rolling out from its fellows, an immense orb of candent sapphire. Beside it appeared a world, fit child of that luminary in size. (Abraham Merritt, The Face in the Abyss)

Was Jove that secret long, and, hearing it,
Indignant, slew him with his candent bolt. (Homer, The Odyssey)

Origin:

1570–80; Latin candent- (stem of candēns, present participle of candēre to be shining white), equivalent to cand- bright (Dictionary.com)

The earliest known use of the adjective candent is in the late 1500s. OED's earliest evidence for candent is from 1585, in the writing of John Dee, mathematician, astrologer, and antiquary. Candent is a borrowing from Latin. (Oxford English Dictionary)