lucubration

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The Word of the Day for September 30 is:

lucubration   \loo-kyuh-BRAY-shun\   noun
     : laborious or intensive study; also : the product of such 
study -- usually used in plural

Example sentence:
     Harper's doctoral dissertation is a collection of 
lucubrations that contemplate the role of linguistics in media 
and politics.

Did you know?
     Imagine someone studying through the night by the light of 
a dim candle or lamp. That image demonstrates perfectly the most 
literal sense of "lucubration." Our English word derives from 
the Latin verb "lucubrare," meaning "to work by lamplight" (yes, 
that Latin root is related to "lux," the Latin word 
for "light"). In its earliest known English uses in the late 
1500s and early 1600s, "lucubration" named both nocturnal study 
itself and a written product thereof. By the 1800s, however, the 
term had been broadened to refer to any intensive study (day or 
night), or a composition, especially a weighty one, generated as 
a result of such study. Nowadays, "lucubration" is most often 
used as a plural and implies pompous or stuffy scholarly writing.