antediluvian
Aug. 15th, 2016 08:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordTheme week! Words first used by Sir Thomas Browne, a 17th century writer with a notably Latinate prose style, who coined or adopted from Latin many words now in daily use. Well, this one is more like weekly use, but it's such a wonderful one:
antediluvian (an-tee-di-LOO-vee-uhn) - adj., of or belonging to the period of the Noachian Flood, or of before a flood; very old-fashioned and out-of-date, antiquated.
This is a 1646 coinage from Latin roots, rather than an adoption of an existing Latin word, which Browne used for the first meaning given -- by 1700, however, it had taken on the metaphoric extension of being so old that it's as if they/it predated the flood. Said roots being ante-, before + dīluvium, flood/deluge, literally a washing away, from dis-, away + -luere, combining form of lavere, to wash. My favorite use is in The Hunting of the Snark: "As the man they call'd “Ho!” told his story of woe / In an antediluvian tone."
---L.
antediluvian (an-tee-di-LOO-vee-uhn) - adj., of or belonging to the period of the Noachian Flood, or of before a flood; very old-fashioned and out-of-date, antiquated.
This is a 1646 coinage from Latin roots, rather than an adoption of an existing Latin word, which Browne used for the first meaning given -- by 1700, however, it had taken on the metaphoric extension of being so old that it's as if they/it predated the flood. Said roots being ante-, before + dīluvium, flood/deluge, literally a washing away, from dis-, away + -luere, combining form of lavere, to wash. My favorite use is in The Hunting of the Snark: "As the man they call'd “Ho!” told his story of woe / In an antediluvian tone."
---L.
