A.Word.A.Day --boswell

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Sep 26, 2011

This week's theme
Eponyms

This week's words
boswell
quisling
schlemiel
augean
celadon

James Boswell with Samuel Johnson
(detail from "A Literary Party at Sir Joshua Reynolds's")

Art: D. George Thompson after James William Edmund Doyle

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A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

Eponyms are little capsules of history. They capture a bundle of stories in just a word or two. These are terms derived from the names of people, from ep- (upon) + -onym (name). They summarize their characters and the qualities that made them stand out.

In the five eponyms we explore this week, we'll meet people, real and fictional, from a diverse world that includes a biographer, an army major, a Biblical figure, a mythological king, and a loving shepherd.

Boswell

PRONUNCIATION:

(BOZ-wel)

MEANING:

noun: A biographer, especially one who records in detail the life of another and who obtains information through close observation of the subject.

ETYMOLOGY:

After James Boswell (1740-1795), Scottish lawyer, diarist, and author, who was a companion and biographer of the lexicographer Samuel Johnson. He wrote the biography "Life of Samuel Johnson". Earliest documented use: 1858.

USAGE:

"There has been a cooling of relations between Mr. Buffett and Ms. Schroeder, his Boswell, who spent five years researching and writing his biography."
Leslie Wayne; Buffett Cancels Event With Biographer; The New York Times; Feb 3, 2009.

"Thierry Guetta is both their Boswell and their stalker, filming, filming, filming, always."
Michael Phillips; Movie Review: Exit Through the Gift Shop; Chicago Tribune; Apr 29, 2010.

See more usage examples of Boswell in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others. -Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662)

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