GRANDILOQUENT WORDS OF THE 19TH CENTURY

 

Have you ever been inveigled? Bamboozled? Have you been hornswoggled by lexiphanic rodomontade? Have you fallen victim to the flummery of an ultracrepidarian?

Fear not — you can learn to parse these fanciful formations and lexical sockdolagers. You might even pick up some parlance with which to pepper your own persiflage.

We're talking about grandiloquent words, delightful colloquialisms mostly from the 19th century. John Camden Hotten's Dictionary of Modern Slang, published in 1859, described them as vulgarisms of an indulgent public.

If you're a native speaker of American English, these words make you smile, so that means they work, Mr. Sokolowski said. They just work.

To read the complete article, see:
Words Full of Sound and Fury (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/crosswords/grandiloquent-words-language.html)

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web