I have really a large vocabulary.
Feb. 7th, 2017 02:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conulyThis isn't boasting. It's just the truth. Inchoate aside, it really is unusual for me to come across a word I really don't know at all.
So I subscribed to the Word a Day email, which is 50% bizarre words you'd never use ever... and 50% words I really thought everybody knew, and maybe they do.
Here is today's email:
bovarism
PRONUNCIATION:
(BO-vuh-riz-em)
MEANING:
noun: A romanticized, unrealistic view of oneself.
ETYMOLOGY:
From Emma Bovary, the title character in Gustave Flaubert’s 1857 novel Madame Bovary. Earliest documented use: 1902.
And just to drive the point home, the concluding thought of the day runs thus:
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else. -Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US President (1858-1919)
Oh, man. I'm going to print out posters of that, and pin it up all around the outside of the Natural History Museum this weekend. (Because I'm pretty sure the cops won't let me get close enough to Trump Tower to post it there.)
So I subscribed to the Word a Day email, which is 50% bizarre words you'd never use ever... and 50% words I really thought everybody knew, and maybe they do.
Here is today's email:
bovarism
PRONUNCIATION:
(BO-vuh-riz-em)
MEANING:
noun: A romanticized, unrealistic view of oneself.
ETYMOLOGY:
From Emma Bovary, the title character in Gustave Flaubert’s 1857 novel Madame Bovary. Earliest documented use: 1902.
And just to drive the point home, the concluding thought of the day runs thus:
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else. -Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US President (1858-1919)
Oh, man. I'm going to print out posters of that, and pin it up all around the outside of the Natural History Museum this weekend. (Because I'm pretty sure the cops won't let me get close enough to Trump Tower to post it there.)
no subject
Date: 2017-02-07 10:17 pm (UTC)http://www.snopes.com/theodore-roosevelt-on-criticizing-the-president/
no subject
Date: 2017-02-08 04:39 am (UTC)