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sciential: msg#00008

culture.language.word-of-the-day

Subject: sciential

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The Word of the Day for September 9 is:

sciential \sye-EN-shul\ adjective
*1 : relating to or producing knowledge or science
2 : having efficient knowledge : capable

Example sentence:
Of the value of having a library at hand for a liberal
education, Coleridge wrote: "There is no way of arriving at any
sciential end but by finding it at every step."

Did you know?
You might expect "sciential," which derives from
Latin "scientia" (meaning "knowledge"), to be used mostly in
technical papers and descriptions of scientific experiments. In
truth, however, "sciential" has long been a favorite of
playwrights and poets. It appears in the works of Ben Jonson,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and John Keats, among others. Keats
made particularly lyrical use of it in his narrative
poem "Lamia," which depicts a doomed love affair between the
Greek sorceress Lamia and a human named Lycius. In the poem,
Hermes transforms Lamia from a serpent into a beautiful
woman, "Not one hour old, yet of sciential brain."

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.





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