Word of the Day!

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)

phantasmagoria [fan-taz-muh-gawr-ee-uh, -gohr-]

noun:
1 having a fantastic or deceptive appearance, as something in a dream or created by the imagination
2 having the appearance of an optical illusion, especially one produced by a magic lantern
3 changing or shifting, as a scene made up of many elements

Examples:

Witness the number 'Sunday,' an homage to Sondheim's faultless musical 'Sunday in the Park with George.' In Miranda's imagining, the song becomes a theater-history phantasmagoria, with an endless parade of Broadway stars appearing as extras. (Scott Hocker, 8 movie musicals that prove the screen can share the stage , The Week, May 2024)

The program has given us the dramatis personae of the political world as miniaturised cartoon figures racing through a phantasmagoria, or as all-too-human personalities trapped in a chair by Cassidy's steadily relentless questioning - or sometimes caught on camera during moments of flailing desperation, in what are badged 'Matt Price moments.' (Jane Goodall, Softly, softly, Inside Story, June 2019)

The result is a eye-popping phantasmagoria, with wild shapes shaded in rainbow filling the background, flowers adorning the bottom of the page, and small, intricate doodles covering Carlile’s body, bringing the whimsical style of Fewocious’ work to the pages of Billboard. (Divya Venkatamaran, Nithiyendran and the 'otherness' of his art, GQ, November 2022)

It is the hour when Byron's brain becomes thronged with a glowing phantasmagoria of ideas that cry aloud for visible expression. (May Clarissa Gillington, A Day with Lord Byron)

A review of the past then rose up before her, from the time of her first entering that house, the bride of Mr Carlyle, to her present sojourn in it. The old scenes passed through her mind like the changing picture in a phantasmagoria. (Mrs Henry Wood, East Lynne)

Origin:

'fantastic series or medley of illusive or terrifying figures or images,' 1802, the name of a magic lantern exhibition brought to London in 1802 by Parisian showman Paul de Philipstal. The name is an alteration of French phantasmagorie, which is said to have been coined 1801 by French dramatist Louis-Sébastien Mercier as though to mean 'crowd of phantoms,' from Greek phantasma 'image, phantom, apparition' (from PIE root bha- 'to shine'). The second element appears to be a French form of Greek agora 'assembly. 'But the inventor of the word prob. only wanted a mouth-filling and startling term, and may have fixed on -agoria without any reference to the Greek lexicon' [OED]. The transferred meaning 'shifting scene of many elements' is attested from 1822. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

poltroon [pol-troon]

noun:
a wretched coward, lacking courage; ignobly timid and faint-hearted

Examples:

Turned him into a scaredy-cat. A yellow belly. A cowardly custard. Faint-of-heart, jellyfish, gutless wonder, chickenheart, pantywaist, poltroon and wheyface. You get to pick. (Rich Johnson, What Will The (Or A) Joker Do With Red Hood Now? (Spoilers), Bleeding Cool News, November 2023)

H L Mencken had made his name satirizing 'boobus Americanus' and trumpeting his belief that the average American was an 'ignoramus and poltroon.' (Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, H L Mencken's Cynical Commentary Made Americans Laugh - Little Did They Know, Historynet, November 2020)

Although often cast as a rich poltroon or amiably ineffectual, he also had a firm grasp of emotional control; sometimes there was a look of real hurt just above that prominent chin. (Gavin Gaughan, Edward Herrmann: Character actor on screen whose air of Ivy League solidity and intelligence made him an ideal leading man on stage, Independent, March 2015)

I now stood in the empty hall; before me was the breakfast-room door, and I stopped, intimidated and trembling. What a miserable little poltroon had fear, engendered of unjust punishment, made of me in those days! (Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre)

"If you are not, after all," resumed the duke, "the veriest coward and most lily-livered poltroon in all his majesty's dominions, follow me into that carriage, Prince." (William Henry Farn, Sylvester's Eve)

Origin:

'A coward; a nidgit; a scoundrel' [Johnson, who spells it poltron], 1520s, from French poultron 'rascal, coward; sluggard' (16c, Modern French poltron), from Italian poltrone 'lazy fellow, coward,' from poltro 'lazy, cowardly,' which is apparently from poltro 'couch, bed', perhaps from a Germanic source (compare Old High German polstar 'pillow, or perhaps from Latin pullus 'young of an animal' (from PIE root pau- 'few, little'). (Online Etymology Dictionary)

When you get down to synonyms, a poltroon is just a chicken. Barnyard chickens are fowl that have long been noted for timidity, and the name chicken has been applied to human cowards since the 17th century. Poltroon has been used for wimps and cravens for even longer, since the early 16th century at least. And if you remember that chickens are dubbed poultry, you may guess that the birds and the cowards are linked by etymology as well as synonymy. English picked up poltroon from Middle French, which in turn got it from Old Italian poltrone, meaning 'coward.' The Italian term has been traced to the Latin pullus, a root that is also an ancestor of pullet ('a young hen') and poultry. (Merriam-Webster)

In the eighteenth century its origin was widely believed to be that suggested by an eminent French classical scholar of the previous century, Claudius Salmasius. He theorised that the word derived from medieval longbowmen. One who wished not to risk his skin in combat had only to make himself incapable of drawing a longbow by cutting off his right thumb. In Latin, pollice truncus meant maimed in the thumb; Salmasius asserted that this had become corrupted into the French poltron.

In the nineteenth century this wildly inventive view was no longer believed. Scholars noted instead that in French - and also in the obviously related Italian poltrone - the word didn't just mean a coward but also someone who wallowed in sloth and idleness. This led them to believe that it originated in Italian poltro, a couch, an etymology respectable enough to be cited in the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Today's Oxford etymologists are sure both stories are wrong. They point instead to the classical Latin pullus for the young of any animal, particularly a young domestic fowl or chicken. It's the source also of pullet and is related to poultry and - more distantly - to foal. The link is an ancient reference to the notoriously timorous and craven behaviour of farmyard fowl. So a poltroon is chicken. How appropriate. (World Wide Words)

plumptious [pluhmp-shuhs ]

adjective:
(informal) plump and delicious

Examples:

She says plumptious beauties, I say grapes. She says lambent puce, I say pink. She says. "Heady wafts of serenity-inducing scent", I say, "What stinks?" (Janelle Koenig, Janelle Koenig: Sweet serving of Queen Nigella, The West Australian, December 2015)

Everything is bespoke, with highly-polished chrome fittings, varnished wood, plumptious chairs, and high-end decor with tasteful pastel shades fighting for your attention wherever your deck shoes take you (Dean Mellor, The best of the western Mediterranean on board newly-refurbished Marella Voyager, Yorkshire Evening Post, August 2023)

Ken would have felt humbled - he would have said it was tattyfilarious, plumptious and "I'm totally discomknockerated." (Eleanor Barlow, Mural tributes to Sir Ken Dodd unveiled in Liverpool, Belfast Telegraph, March 2020)

It was like seeing some dreamy fruit at the point of optimum, plumptious juiciness. (A A Gill, To America with Love)

Origin:

Portmanteau of the words plump and scrumptious (Urban Dictionary)

polrumptious [puhl-rump-shuhs]

adjective:
a word from the 1800s meaning big-headed, obstreperous, and downright obnoxious.

Examples:

I'm going to make it one of my life goals to be more polrumptious. I'm sick of being seen as 'meek' or 'timid'. I'd rather annoy people with my confidence than continue to fade into the woodwork. (Are We There Yet?, January 2014)

"Why, that's another matter" replied the beadle, "and if it be true - and I think thou dost not look so polrumptious as thy playfellow yonder - Thou wouldst be a mettle lass enow, an thou wert snog and snod a bid better." (Sir Walter Scott, The Heart of Mid-Lothian)

But niver mind, sir, us'll wait up for mun to-night, an' I'll get the loan o' the Dearloves' blunderbust in case they gets polrumptious. (Arthur Quiller-Couch, The Astonishing History of Troy Town)

Origin:

First used in Kent - or Cornwall, depending on your sources - this word was documented by Francis Grose in A Provincial Glossary, published in 1787... comes from the Middle English polle meaning head (derived from Middle Low German or Middle Dutch), and the late Middle English rump meaning backside (probably Scandinavian). (Joanna Puckering, PhD's Post)

perhaps from poll 'the head' + rumption + -ous; first documented 1787 in A Provincial Glossary by Francis Grose (Words and Phrases from the Past)