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magniloquent: msg#00025

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Subject: magniloquent

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The Word of the Day for July 26 is:

magniloquent \mag-NIL-uh-kwunt\ adjective
: speaking in or characterized by a high-flown often
bombastic style or manner

Example sentence:
Poet Edward Weismiller told _The Baltimore Sun_ (April 10,
2004) that his former tendency to be magniloquent "was stamped
out" of him by his mentor John Berryman.

Did you know?
"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" for the bombastic in the 1600s --
even though we'd 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.






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