This week’s theme
Adjectives

This week’s words
culminant
perficient
reprehensible
nondescript
ostrobogulous


This week’s comments
AWADmail 1102

Next week’s theme
Words borrowed from Yiddish

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(ah-struh-BOG-yuh-luhs)

MEANING:

adjective: Unusual; bizarre; risqué or indecent.

ETYMOLOGY:

Coined by writer Victor Neuburg (1883-1940). A fanciful formation from either Greek oestrous/estrous (heat or rut) or ostreon (oyster) + bog (dirt) + -ulous (full of). Earliest documented use: 1951.

USAGE:

“Father, you know, doesn’t approve of novels. A tissue of ostrobogulous lies, he calls them. With the writer laughing behind each page at the reader’s gullibility.”
Charles Johnson; Oxherding Tale: A Novel; Scribner; 2005.

“The magnificent Roz Chast’s illustrations are, well, ostrobogulous.”
Michael Pakenham; Editor’s Choice; The Sun (Baltimore, Maryland); Apr 6, 2003.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: