Micawber [mih-KAW-buhr]

(n.)

- An eternal and unrelenting optimist.

Eponym of “Wilkins Micawber” who was the incurable optimist in Charles Dickens’ novel “David Copperfield.”

Used in a sentence:

“One’s attitude is the filter that determines your personal experience as you interact with life, which is why I choose to be a Micawber.”

(from The Grandiloquent Word of the Day)
~~

Happy Valentine's Day, if you're celebrating, and Happy Friday to everyone :)

P.S. Do you like the new layout for this comm? Let me know :)

sallymn

Kafkaesque [kahf-kuh-esk]

adjective:
1 of, relating to, or suggestive of Franz Kafka or his writings
2 having a nightmarishly complex, bizarre, or illogical quality

Examples:

And yet to choose the right one, shoppers must navigate a Kafkaesque maze. (Steven Kurutz, Mattress shopping can be confusing, Herald-Tribune, October 2014)

In fact, to survive in this system, one has to be an expert in camouflaging and hiding from the system. So, let’s dive deeper into this Kafkaesque process, in which the aim is not to learn how to avoid bureaucracy but how people manage to get bureaucracy done. (Amna Hashmi, The rise of bureaucratic cartels, The Express Tribune, June 2024)

For some reason this has less a distancing effect than one of increased intimacy. It's one of the rules of his Kafkaesque game of alienation with the reader; almost as if he's daring us to become involved, or to resist becoming involved. (M John Harrison, Posthumous Stories by David Rose - review, The Guardian, December 2013)

Even at their most whimsical, in some ways, the film's magical realist touches aren't far off from the reality of the US immigration system, where Kafkaesque absurdities abound. (Catherine E Shoichet, This veteran actor plays an immigration lawyer in a new movie. In real life he's fighting his own case, CNN, March 2024)

It is a Kafkaesque, sealed universe in which nothing is, as it appears to be. (Sam Vaknin, After the Rain)

Origin:

1947, resembling such situations as are explored in the fiction of Franz Kafka (1883-1924), German-speaking Jewish novelist born in Prague, Austria-Hungary. The surname is Czech German, literally 'jackdaw,' and is imitative. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was a Czech-born German-language writer whose surreal fiction vividly expressed the anxiety, alienation, and powerlessness of the individual in the 20th century. The opening sentence of his 1915 story 'The Metamorphosis' has become one of the most famous in Western literature (“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect”), while in his novel The Trial, published a year after his death, a young man finds himself caught up in the mindless bureaucracy of the law after being charged with a crime that is never named. So deft was Kafka’s prose at detailing nightmarish settings in which characters are crushed by nonsensical, blind authority, that writers began using his name as an adjective a mere 16 years after his death. Although many other literary eponyms, from Austenian to Homeric, exist and are common enough, Kafkaesque gets employed more than most and in a wide variety of contexts, leading to occasional charges that the word has been watered down and given a lack of specificity due to overuse. (Merriam-Webster)

sallymn

braggadocio [brag-uh-doh-shee-oh]

noun:
1 empty boasting; bragging
2 a boasting person; braggart

Examples:

Cruz spins these operations into digital content ranging from tips for aspiring investors to plain old-fashioned yacht-flaunting braggadocio. (Michael Friedrich, The Landlords of Social Media Seem Happy to Play the Villain, The New York Times Magazine, October 2023)

And yet among the endless braggadocio and machismo there is something quite touching, even charming, about his intense relationship with himself. Unlike, say, Cristiano Ronaldo, the vanity comes with an appreciation of the absurd. (Andrew Anthony, Adrenaline by Zlatan Ibrahimović review - he doesn't just talk a good game, The Guardian, August 2022)

There was bluster, bombast and beer for his horses and for those who hoisted a red Solo cup. And there were tender, deeply romantic ballads as well as braggadocio, seasoned with a taste of humor. (Jon Bream, Remembering Toby Keith: Bluster, beer and horse sense, Star Tribune, Febriary 2024)

The braggadocio aspect is important: a successful but modest man is ordinarily not called a k'nocker. A k'nocker is someone who works crossword puzzles - with a pen (especially if someone is watching). (Leo Rosten, The New Joys of Yiddish: Completely Updated)

Origin:

1590, coined by Spenser as the name of his personification of vainglory ('Faerie Queene', ii.3), from brag, with augmentative ending from Italian words then in vogue in English. In general use by 1594 for 'an empty swaggerer'; of the talk of such persons, from 1734. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Though Braggadocio is not as well-known as other fictional characters like Pollyanna, the Grinch, or Scrooge, in lexicography he holds a special place next to them as one of the many characters whose name has become an established word in English. The English poet Edmund Spenser originally created Braggadocio as a personification of boasting in his epic poem The Faerie Queene. As early as 1594, about four years after the poem was published, English speakers began using the name as a general term for any blustering blowhard. The now more common use of braggadocio, referring to the talk or behavior of such 'windy cockalorums', developed in the early 18th century. (Merriam-Webster)

sallymn

pandemonium [pan-duh-moh-nee-uhm]

noun:
1 wild uproar or unrestrained disorder; tumult or chaos.
2 a place or scene of riotous uproar or utter chaos.

Examples:

Those photos of Cassidy hoisting the Stanley Cup say it all: The Golden Knights’ third coach led Las Vegas’ NHL team to the promised land, fulfilling the prophecy and sending this town into total pandemonium. (Readers' Choice - Best Coach: Bruce Cassidy, Las Vegas Weekly, August 2023)

Residents and parents at the school called the previous situation 'pandemonium', saying cars used to 'fly down' to drop kids off for another school over the road. (Jack Fifield, Glorious English summer hustle has been an Ashes rush like no other, The Oldham Times, June 2023)

It's official: The shirt that turned the actor Colin Firth into a heartthrob - and helped fuel the continuing global Jane Austen pandemonium - is coming to the United States. (Sarah Schmelling, The Darcy Shirt, a Tour Rider, The New Yorker, May 2016)

In an instant pandemonium reigned, for the heavy boulder had mowed down a score of the pursuers, breaking arms and legs in its meteoric descent. (Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Monster Men)

There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why - when it did not seem worth while to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead; when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation. (Kate Chopin, The Awakening)

Origin:

1667, Pandæmonium, in 'Paradise Lost' the name of the palace built in the middle of Hell, 'the high capital of Satan and all his peers,' and the abode of all the demons; coined by John Milton (1608-1674) from Greek pan- 'all' + Late Latin daemonium 'evil spirit,' from Greek daimonion 'inferior divine power,' from daimōn 'lesser god'.

Transferred sense 'place of uproar and disorder' is from 1779; that of 'wild, lawless confusion' is from 1865. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

When John Milton needed a name for the gathering place of all demons for Paradise Lost, he turned to the classics as any sensible 17th-century writer would. Pandæmonium, as the capital of Hell is known in the epic poem, combines the Greek prefix pan-, meaning 'all', with the Late Latin daemonium, meaning 'evil spirit'. (Daemonium itself traces back to the far more innocuous Greek word daímōn, meaning 'spirit' or 'divine power'.) Over time, Pandæmonium (or Pandemonium) came to designate all of hell and was used as well for earthbound dens of wickedness and sin. By the late-18th century, the word implied a place or state of confusion or uproar, and from there, it didn’t take long for pandemonium to become associated with states of utter disorder and wildness. (Merriam-Webster)

med_cat

I heard it, of all places, in one of the recent current events/political discussions. The presenter said that Putin and Xi Jinping were both engaged in gatsbying.

...
"...So, anyway I recently came across this fascinating dating trend and I could really relate to this one because, let's face it, we've all done it once in our lives and reaped the benefits from it. Or not! The trend is called Gatsbying and yes, the relevance is derived from The Great Gatsby. Gatsbying is when you have a crush on someone and you want their attention upon you, you resort to social media, primarily Instagram, Snapchat or Facebook and put stories from your life, which may get you attention from your respective crush for them to notice you, so you can make a fair amount of an impression upon them! Yup, it's a very new-age trend and of course limited to urban dwellers who're fairly active on social media."

You can read more in this article from 2018: 'Gatsbying', The New Dating Trend, Is The Best Possible Way To Impress Your Crush Right Now

sallymn

grimoire [greem-wahr]

noun:
a manual of magic or witchcraft used by witches and sorcerers; a magician's manual for invoking demons and the spirits of the dead

Examples:

Necronomicon, or the 'book of dead names' that Montrose refers to isn't actually a real book - unless you count the 2008 collection of Lovecraft's short stories published under that title. It's a 'grimoire' invented by by Lovecraft in his 1924 story The Hound. (Ellen E Jones, Lovecraft Country recap: season one, episode two - have you guys not seen Get Out?, The Guardian, August 2020)

E'ilor dwells in a large cavern deep beneath a small farming village in the Severn Valley, and possesses vine-like tentacles which can be used for capturing prey or offering communal sacrifices. Both of these deities receive brief mention in the multi-volume grimoire Revelations of Glaaki. (Ramsey Campbell deities, The Annex)

The book was his Grimoire, a collection of magical writings. The pages were all different sizes and thicknesses, which made them difficult to turn. Some were of parchment, others were of vellum, and some were thin sheets of leather. It was the strangest book in the world. (Richard Carpenter, Catweazle: Novelisation of the 1969 TV Series)

And vain the charm recovered
From out the daemon-hovered,
Worm-travelled page of pentacled grimoire.
(Clark Ashton Smith, 'O Golden-Tongued Romance')

The first object that caught his attention, was a large grimoire, or book of spells, which lay open on the philosopher's desk. (Charles Mackay, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions)

(The frontispiece and title page of a French translation of a grimoire allegedly, but unlikely
to have been, written by Pope Honorius III, click to enlarge)

Origin:

1849, from French grimoire, altered from grammaire 'incantation; grammar' (Online Etymology Dictionary)

A grimoire is a book of magic that may contain spells, conjurations, instructions for divination and the construction of amulets, and other secret knowledge of a supernatural kind. The examples include such famous works as the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, The Book of St Cyprian, The Key of Solomon and The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage.

The word is French, in the same sense. It began to appear in French-English dictionaries early in the nineteenth century but became more widely known in the 1850s. In French, it was a medieval modification of grammaire, a book of grammar, by which was meant Latin grammar, since at the time there was no other kind. It derives from the Latin grammatica, the study of literature in general, which by the Middle Ages had come to mean knowledge of Latin.

The shift from book of grammar to book of magic isn’t as weird as it might seem. Few among the ordinary people in those times could read or write. For superstitious minds books were troubling objects. Who knew what awful information was locked up in them? For many people grammar meant the same thing as learning, and everybody knew that learning included astrology and other occult arts.

In medieval English, grammarye was likewise the study of Latin grammar and this, too, took on undertones of occult learning, magic and necromancy. It fell out of use but was revived by Sir Walter Scott in his Lay of the Last Minstrel in 1805. (World Wide Words)

sallymn

ichor [ahy-kawr, ahy-ker]

noun:
1 (Classical mythology) an ethereal fluid believed to supply the place of blood in the veins of the gods
2 an acrid, watery discharge, as from an ulcer or wound
3 (literary) any bloodlike fluid

Examples:

On my way home the blood coursed through my veins like an immortal ichor of the gods, full of sweet and inextinguishable fire. (John Munro, A Trip to Venus)

The thing that lay half-bent on its side in a foetid pool of greenish-yellow ichor and tarry stickiness was almost nine feet tall, and the dog had torn off all the clothing and some of the skin. (H P LOvecraft, The Dunwich Horror)

He reached beneath his tattered greatcoat and drew forth a cutlass that dripped with black ichor. (J Robert King, Guild Wars: Edge of Destiny)

And then comes the final test, the infallible touchstone of the seventh-rate: Ichor. It oozes out of severed tentacles, it beslimes tessellated pavements, bespatters bejeweled courtiers, and bores the bejesus out of everybody. (Ursula le Guin, 'From Elfland to Poughkeepsie')

Because my father has the ichor of capitalism flowing in his veins....For hundreds of years to be [a member of his family] has been to be a merchant, and to be a merchant is to make money. (Donna Leon, About Face)

Origin:

1630s, from French ichor (16c) or Modern Latin ichor, from Greek ikhōr, a word of unknown origin, possibly from a non-Indo-European language. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

med_cat

Podsnappery [pod-SNAP-uh-ree]
(n.)
-An attitude toward life marked by complacency and a refusal to recognize unpleasant facts.
-Smug self-satisfaction and a lack of interest in the affairs of others.

From “Podsnap” (a character in the Charles Dickens novel “Our Mutual Friend” in which Mr. Podsnap was "conscious that he set a brilliant social example in being particularly well satisfied with most things, and, above all other things, with himself”) + -ery.

Used in a sentence:
“These may be said to have been the articles of a faith and school which the present chapter takes the liberty of calling, after its representative man, Podsnappery.”
~Charles Dickens - Our Mutual Friend

(Source: The Grandiloquent Word of the Day FB page)

med_cat

Trending: ‘Panglossian’

Lookups spiked 3,000% on March 9, 2020

Why are people looking up Panglossian?

Panglossian had a rare moment at the top of our lookups on March 9, 2020. An article in The New York Times gives an analysis of the combination of medical realities, scientific recommendations, and political responses to the coronavirus, especially the statements and actions of President Trump:

Mr. Trump, who is at his strongest politically when he has a human enemy to attack, has seemed less certain of how to take on an invisible killer. The role of calming natural leader is not one that has come easily as he struggles to find the balance between public reassurance and Panglossian dismissiveness.

What does Panglossian mean?

Panglossian means "marked by the view that all is for the best in this best of possible worlds" or "excessively optimistic."

Where does Panglossian come from?

Panglossian comes from the name of a literary character, Pangloss, from Voltaire's novel Candide, first published in 1759. In the novel, Pangloss is depicted as an optimist whose positive attitude often seems at odds with his circumstances, and his motto is "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds."

The name Pangloss is from the Greek elements pan- ("all") and glōssa ("tongue," "language") suggesting glibness and garrulousness.

What is notable about this use of Panglossian?

Other notable words derived from literary characters include quixotic and gargantuan.

Citations

You may have perhaps heard of there being a University at Aberdeen, in a distant and confused murmur, little suspecting, hoever, that from that Panglossian mint of doctors of canon and civil law, we derive articles of a peculiar salmon-tased jocosity.
— William Blackwood, Townsend's Tour Through Ireland and Great Britain, 1822

(source: Merriam-Webster Online)

med_cat

It caught my eye because there had been a film called "Svengali", and I hadn't known the title actually meant something, I'd assumed it was the last name of the main character or the name of the place.

(not seen the film, but some good-looking actors in it; it's on YouTube)
~~

'Svengali' Bannon leaving White House

'A person who manipulates or exerts excessive control over another'

Aug 18, 2017

Svengali (“a person who manipulates or exerts excessive control over another”) cozened its way to the top of our lookups on August 18th, 2017, following multiple news reports that political strategist Stephen Bannon would soon be fired from his position at the White House.

Photo: Gage Skidmore

It is the second time this year that the word 'Svengali' has spiked in reference to Bannon.

Trump had been under mounting pressure to dispense with Bannon, who many officials view as a political Svengali but who has drawn scorn as a leading internal force encouraging and amplifying the president’s most controversial nationalist impulses.
—Ashley Parker, Philip Rucker, Robert Costa, and Damian Paletta, The Washington Post, 18 Aug. 2017

In 1894 George du Maurier published his novel, Trilby, which featured a decidedly unpleasant character named Svengali. The following year the name began appear in print used in a figurative manner.

This is the second time this year that Svengali has been among our top lookups while being used in reference to Bannon. The previous instance came at the end of January 2017, after the editorial board of The New York Times used the word in describing him.

(Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/news-trend-watch/svengali-bannon-leaving-white-house-20170818)

med_cat

Sardoodledom
(sar-DOO-dl-dum)
Noun:
-A play with an over-written and melodramatic plot.
-Mechanically contrived plot structure and stereotyped or unrealistic characterization in drama
-Well-made works of drama that have trivial, insignificant, or morally objectionable plots.

From the name of the French dramatist Sardou + doodle + -dom.

Used in a sentence:
“Some days, it feels like I’m the unwitting player in a sardoodledom.”

(from the Grandiloquent Word of the Day FB pg)

med_cat

Apologies for missing last Friday; here are two words, to make up for it:
~~

Nefelibata
(ne-fe-LE-ba-ta)
Noun:
-A cloud walker; one who lives in the cloud of their own imagination or dreams, or one who does not abide by the precepts of society, literature, or art;
-An unconventional, unorthodox person.

From Portuguese “nephele” cloud and “batha" - a place where you can walk

Used in a sentence:
“Always the nefelibata in grade school, his social calendar was generally wide open; but now that he’s a billionaire, he finds it difficult to decide which event he wishes to grace with his much sought after presence.”

Grandiloquent Word of the Day: Podsnappery
(POD•SNAP•per•ee)
Noun:
-An attitude toward life marked by complacency and a refusal to recognize unpleasant facts
-Smug self-satisfaction and a lack of interest in the affairs of others

From Podsnap + -ery, referring to a character Mr. Podsnap in Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend (1864–1865), in which this word was also coined. Podsnap was "conscious that he set a brilliant social example in being particularly well satisfied with most things, and, above all other things, with himself”

Used in a sentence:
“These may be said to have been the articles of a faith and school which the present chapter takes the liberty of calling, after its representative man, Podsnappery.”
~Charles Dickens - Our Mutual Friend

(both are from Grandiloquent Word of the Day FB page)

med_cat

roman à clef ,n. ro·man à clef \rō-ˌmä(ⁿ)n-(ˌ)ä-ˈklā\
(plural romans à clef \-ˌmäⁿ-(ˌ)zä-\)

: a novel in which real persons or actual events figure under disguise

Etymology:

French, literally, novel with a key

First Known Use: 1893

med_cat

words-that-come-from-characters-in-books-yahoo

Definition:

: an uncouth or rowdy person

About the Word:

Yahoo comes to the English language from the fertile imagination of Jonathan Swift, author of the famed Gulliver's Travels (as well as the somewhat less-remembered Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue).

In Gulliver's Travels the Yahoos were an imaginary humanoid race, brutish and uncouth. This book was also responsible for introducing the words Lilliputian and brobdingnagian.

Example:

"We are not your ordinary bunch of yahoos." - PC Magazine (advertisement). 24 Dec. 1985

(Source: Merriam-Webster's A Who's Who of literary allusions: words that come from characters in books)

trellia-chan.livejournal.com

stentorian: [sten-tohr-ee-uh n]

adjective: Very loud or powerful in sound, such as a stentorian voice.

etymology: Coined around 1600. From Stentor, the Greek herald in the Trojan War, described in "The Iliad" to have a voice as loud as 50 men. His name comes from the Greek word stenein meaning "groan, moan."

trellia-chan.livejournal.com

hooptedoodle (hoop-tuh-doodle)

Noun: Simply put, hooptedoodle is a literary term that refers to the type of overly wordy prose that gets in the way of propelling a story forward. It's filler, and could be edited out without taking anything important or relevant from the writing.

Origin: As far as I can tell, the term was coined and used several times by John Steinbeck in his 1954 novel Sweet Tuesday. If anyone knows anything different, please say so!

Writer Elmore Leonard was fond of the word as well, and often cited John Steinbeck's use of it when refering to it.

Quoting Elmore Leonard from his New York Times article from July 16, 2001:

"Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he's writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character's head, and the reader either knows what the guy's thinking or doesn't care. I'll bet you don't skip dialogue."

"What Steinbeck did in Sweet Thursday was title his chapters as an indication, though obscure, of what they cover. 'Whom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts' is one, 'Lousy Wednesday' is another. The third chapter is titled "Hooptedoodle 1" and the 38th chapter 'Hooptedoodle 2' as warnings to the reader, as if Steinbeck is saying: 'Here's where you'll see me taking flights of fancy with my writing, and it won't get in the way of the story. Skip them if you want.'"

trellia-chan.livejournal.com

Sorry I missed last week! To make up for it, I have two words this week.

I was working on a script treatment with my partner when I typed the phrase " in cahoots" to describe a wicked connection between characters. We both laughed, and then replaced it with a less silly sounding "in business." ^_^ Still, it got me curious about that word and it's origins.

Cahoot; [kuh-hoot]

Noun: Collaberation, partnership, league.

It's usually used as a plural in the phrase, "In cahoots." It also tends to be used when refering to shady dealings in particular, unwholesome or illegal activities. The dirty cop was in cahoots with the drug lord all along!

Origin: Unclear, though use of the word was first used and popularized in America in around 1829. I've looked it up in several sources, and it is speculated that the world could originate from the French word cahute which means cabin or hut. Hm....

Roman à clef: [raw-mah na kle] (plural) [romans à clef]

Noun: A novel about real life that is overlaid with a facade of fiction. The events in the story really happened and all characters in the story have ficticious names but correlate directly with the real-life people involved. The literal French translation is "novel with a key" which refers to the "key" authors provide that explains the relationship between the fiction and the nonfiction of their novel. The key may be produced as a separate body from the novel, or it may be incorporated through epigraphs within the novel.

Origin: The concept was created by Madeleine de Scudery in the 1600s to provide a forum for her thinly veiled fiction featuring political and public figures,

An example would be the play (and later movie) The Normal Heart written by Larry Kramer which was a roman à clef of his experiences in the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis in New York City from 1981-1984, and his involvment in the formation of the Gay Men's Health Crisis activist group.

trellia-chan.livejournal.com

Heee, such a fun word! ^_^

pecksniffian: [pek-snif-ee-uhn]

Adjective: Hypocritically benevolent; sanctimonious; Affecting high moral principles.

Origin:1850-55; named after Seth Pecksniff, character in Martin Chuzzlewit, a novel by Charles Dickens.

"Pecksniffish" is an acceptable variation.

med_cat

A literary, rather than a medical, term this time :)
~~

thren·o·dy noun \ˈthre-nə-dē\ : a song or poem that expresses sorrow for someone who is dead: elegy

Examples:

1. the composer's cello concerto was composed as a moving threnody for his late wife
2. Dorothy Parker has a poem titled "Threnody", rather tongue-in-cheek:

Lilacs blossom just as sweet
Now my heart is shattered.
If I bowled it down the street,
Who's to say it mattered?
If there's one that rode away
What would I be missing?
Lips that taste of tears, they say,
Are the best for kissing.

Eyes that watch the morning star
Seem a little brighter;
Arms held out to darkness are
Usually whiter.
Shall I bar the strolling guest,
Bind my brow with willow,
When, they say, the empty breast
Is the softer pillow?

That a heart falls tinkling down,
Never think it ceases.
Every likely lad in town
Gathers up the pieces.
If there's one gone whistling by
Would I let it grieve me?
Let him wonder if I lie;
Let him half believe me.

Etymology:

Greek thrēnōidia, from thrēnos dirge + aeidein to sing

First Known Use: 1634

theidolhands.livejournal.com

mon·de·green [ˈmɒndɪˌɡriːn]:
origin: (1954) Lady Mondegreen by Sylvia Wright

noun
Here's the thing...I grew up listening to music before there was ever such a device as "The Internet". This being said, that means looking up the lyrics of songs, which you did not own, was not a straight forward process. In fact, sometimes even if you owned the material there may not be any lyrics anywhere on the case or liner notes.

And with that being said, I'd always been a smidgen puzzled by Mr. Mister's big hit "Kyrie", but I took the male in the story of the song to be quite taken with some beguiling woman named Kyrie; where she laid he must travel, and she seemed to conjure up the energy of "lasers".

No, she did not.

Because she did not exist, the man was never singing about any femme fatale. I was correct though, in understanding there was a strong and enchanting presence, but that was "Kyrie eleison" -- which is in fact a small prayer in the Greek language, never-the-less used within (Latin) Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Anglican church ceremonies. I know this now because I was recently inspired to look it up after getting a CD with mixed songs from the 1980's.

And that is exactly what a mondegreen is, accidentally misheard words or phrase, as a result of a homophone (similarly sounding words), that gives the original concept a new meaning; an aural malapropism.

Another example: In the book The Glass Menagerie, when Jim O’Connor nicknamed Laura Wingfield "Blue Roses", having misunderstood her childhood ailment of "pleurosis" -- the nickname becoming symbolism for a beautiful object, but one never naturally occurring, just like her favorite crystal animal; a fantasy.

That too is interesting because the origin of the word is also literary, from a story of the same name of Lady Mondegreen, within it quoting Scottish song lyrics: Ye highlands and ye lowlands / Oh where hae you been? / Thou hae slay the Earl of Murray / And Lady Mondegreen. As with Kyrie, there never was a Lady Mondegreen, for the author Sylvia Wright had misheard the words from The Bonny Earl of Murray, whose last line is actually, "slay the Earl of Murray and laid him on the green."

The mistake so famous that it grew a life of it's own! Mondegreen is a mondegreen.

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Entries tagged with literature

Trending: ‘Panglossian’

Lookups spiked 3,000% on March 9, 2020

Why are people looking up Panglossian?

What does Panglossian mean?

Where does Panglossian come from?

What is notable about this use of Panglossian?

Citations

'Svengali' Bannon leaving White House

'A person who manipulates or exerts excessive control over another'

Definition:

About the Word:

Example:

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