Today’s WOTD – 26 September 2012
sententious
[sen-TEN-shuhs],
adjective:
1. Abounding in pithy aphorisms or maxims: a sententious book.
2. Given to excessive moralizing; self-righteous.
3. Given to or using pithy sayings or maxims: a sententious poet.
4. Of the nature of a maxim; pithy.
Sententious is related to sententia, the Latin root for the word sentence. The Latin word sententiosus meant “full of meaning, pithy.”
Examples:
For he was a poet and drowned untimely, and his verse, mild as it is and formal and sententious, sends forth still a frail fluty sound like that of a piano organ played in some back street resignedly by an old Italian organ-grinder in a corduroy jacket.
— Virginia Woolf, “Street Haunting: A London Adventure,” Collected Essays
It was inconceivable that she was using the boring, sententious, contentious Shepherd for anything but a hollow threat to him, but this semblance of wrongdoing could now be turned to advantage.
— Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano
Today’s aphorism
‘Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule’
Stephen King
(What? Not even when researching for Panda’s word of the day?)
On this day
26 September 1181 – birth of St Francis of Assisi, Italian friar and founder of the men’s Franciscan Order, the women’s Order of St Clare and the Third Order of St Francis. Although these are all Catholic Orders, he was never ordained as a Catholic priest. Died 3 October 1226.
26 September 1902 – death of Levi Strauss, German-born, American clothing manufacturer. Most notable for Levi jeans. Born 26 February 1829.
26 September 1907 – New Zealand declares independence from Great Britain.
26 September 1960 – Fidel Castro delivers the longest speech in U.N. history, at 4 hours, 29 minutes.
26 September 1983 – Australia wins the America’s Cup yacht race; the first nation to take the cup off America in 132 years.
26 September 1997 – the Basilica of St Francis of Assisi (in Assisi, Italy) partially collapses after an earthquake strikes the region.