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fictioneer: msg#00008

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Subject: fictioneer

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The Word of the Day for March 10 is:

fictioneer \fik-shuh-NEER\ noun
: one who writes fiction especially in quantity and without high standards

Example sentence:
Dwight was a fictioneer who specialized in pulp novels, producing over 300
of them in his long career.

Did you know?
In Latin, the verb "fingere" means "to shape, fashion, or feign."
Fictioneers surely do shape stories and feign the truth, so you could say that
the noun "fictioneer" is etymologically true to its ancestor. The word
"fiction" had been around for more than 500 years by the time "fictioneer"
appeared in English in 1923, bearing a suffix that harks back to such words as
"engineer" and "pamphleteer." The word is used generally to refer to any writer
of fiction but often specifically to one who writes with little concern for
literary quality. "Fictioneer" and "fiction" aren't the only English feigners
and shapers born of "fingere." The words "effigy," "feign," and "figment" are
among others that trace back to that Latin verb.





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