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Oct 26, 2009
This week's themeEponyms This week's words byronic orwellian manichean machiavellian draconian 
Lord Byron
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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg"Proper names that have become improper and uncommonly common" is how the author Willard R. Espy described eponyms, and that is the theme for this week's words in AWAD: words coined after people's names. We are going to meet a poet, a novelist, a prophet, a statesman, and a legislator. They wrote poems, novels, holy books, political treatises, and laws. In our quest for eponyms, we are going to visit England, Persia, Italy, and Greece. All aboard! Byronic
PRONUNCIATION:
(by-RON-ik)
MEANING:
adjective:
Having characteristics of the poet George Gordon, such as being melancholic, passionate, and melodramatic,
and having disregard for societal norms.
ETYMOLOGY:
After poet Lord Byron (1788-1824), who displayed such characteristics,
as did his poetry, i.e. a flawed character marked by great passion who
exhibits disrespect for social institutions and is self-destructive.
NOTES:
A little-known fact: He was the father of Ada Lovelace, today known as
the first computer programmer, who wrote programs for Charles Babbage's
analytical engine.
USAGE:
"Zenovich casts [movie director Roman] Polanski, whose face repeatedly fills
the screen with a Byronic luminosity, as a tragic figure, a child survivor
of the Holocaust haunted by the murder of his wife, the actress Sharon
Tate, at the hands of the Manson family."Bill Wyman; Whitewashing Roman Polanski; Salon (New York); Feb 19, 2009. "Laurie may have his pet theories as to why [Gregory] House-the-character has become a cult -- the damaged, Byronic genius/healer who can say the unsayable and (almost always) get away with it." Stuart Husband; Hugh Laurie Interview; The Daily Telegraph (London, UK); Jun 3, 2009. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts. -Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931)
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