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bloviate: msg#00007culture.language.word-of-the-day
**************************************************************** Spring fever? Watch your vocabulary grow by trying a free 14-day subscription to Merriam-WebsterUnabridged.com! http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/unabridged_sub.pl?refr=U_wod **************************************************************** The Word of the Day for April 8 is: bloviate \BLOH-vee-ayt\ verb : to speak or write verbosely and windily Example sentence: Maggie liked to turn on the news and watch the media pundits bloviate about the top issues of the day. Did you know? Warren G. Harding is often linked to "bloviate," but to him the word wasn't insulting; it simply meant "to spend time idly." Harding used the word often in that "hanging around" sense, but during his tenure as the 29th U.S. President (1921- 23), he became associated with the "verbose" sense of "bloviate," perhaps because his speeches tended to the long- winded side. Although he is sometimes credited with having coined the word, it's more likely that Harding picked it up from local slang while hanging around with his boyhood buddies in Ohio in the late 1800s. The term probably derives from a combination of the word "blow" plus the suffix "-ate." |
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