Category Archives: Vocabulary

Word of the Weekend: Orotund

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orotund\OR-uh-tund\  adjective

1 :marked by fullness, strength, and clarity of sound : sonorous 
2 :pompous, bombastic   Josh cleared his throat dramatically, then did a dead-on impression of the professor’s orotund, patronizing speech.

 “Comedian Bob Hope used to tell an anecdote about Franklin D. Roosevelt housetraining his Scottish terrier, Fala, on the Chicago Tribune. It was a reference to Roosevelt’s greatest hater,Tribune publisher Robert R. McCormick, an orotund aristocrat who considered the New Deal indistinguishable from Communism.” — From a post by Edward McClellan on NBC Chicago’s Ward Room blog, April 23, 2013 

Did you know?

The Latin roots of “orotund” are related to two more common English words—”oral” and “rotund.” Latin “or-” means “mouth,” and “rotundus” means “round” or “circular.” The Roman poet Horace joined forms of those Latin terms to create the phrase “ore rotundo,” literally meaning “with round mouth,” and figuratively meaning “with well-turned speech.” “Ore rotundo” was modified to “orotund” and adopted into English in the late 18th century. It can indicate either strength of delivery or inflated wording. 

Jill and Barry Baynes

Word of the Weekend: Efflorescence

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efflorescence \ef-luh-RESS-unss\ 
noun 
1a :the action or process of developing and unfolding as if coming into flower  b :an instance of such development  c :fullness of manifestation : culmination 
2 :the period or state of flowering 
3 :the process or product of efflorescingchemically   

“Besides introducing popular religion, the late eleventh century ushered in an intellectual efflorescence as well.” — From Ronald M. Davidson’s 2005 bookTibetan Renaissance 

“Perhaps a collective sense of anxiety about the natural world … has prompted an efflorescence of books about trees from an aesthetic and cultural standpoint in the last decade or so.” — From a review by William Pannapacker in The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 16, 2012  Sponsored Link    

When Edgar Allan Poe spoke of an “efflorescence of language” in The Poetic Principle, he was referring to language that was flowery, or overly rich and colorful. This ties in to the garden roots of “efflorescence,” a word, like “flourish,” that comes from the Latin word for “flower.” More commonly, however, “efflorescence” refers to the literal or figurative act of blossoming much like a flower does. You could speak of “the efflorescence of nature in springtime,” for example, or “the efflorescence of culture during the Renaissance.”

“Efflorescence” is also used in chemistry to refer to a process that occurs when something changes to a powder from loss ofwater of crystallization. 

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Jill and Barry Baynes

Word of the Weekend: Tontine

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May 26, 2013

tontine • \TAHN-teen\  • noun
: a joint financial arrangement whereby the participants usually contribute equally to a prize that is awarded entirely to the participant who survives all the others
Examples:
In the author’s latest suspense novel, the participants in a secret tontine begin to show up dead—one by one.

“He had become interested in an insurance scheme called a tontine, in which people pool their money and the last survivor gets the whole pot. But tontines were now illegal.” —From Alice Schroeder’s 2008 book The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life.

***Definitions provided by Merriam-Webster Dictionary App.