Wednesday, April 30th, 2008...5:16 am

Learn-A-Word Wednesday: afflatus \uh-FLAY-tuhs\

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noun:

A divine imparting of knowledge; inspiration.

Aristophanes must have eclipsed them . . . by the exhibition of some diviner faculty, some higher spiritual afflatus.
— John Addington Symonds, Studies of the Greek Poets

Afflatus is from Latin afflatus, past participle of afflare, “to blow at or breathe on,” from ad-, “at” + flare, “to puff, to blow.”

Gotta love those Romans! They manage to make a cousin of flatulent equate to divine inspiration. I double checked to make sure this wasn’t quoting Bickus Dickus somewhere.

I’m gonna make a new language in which “stinky” also means “orange blossoms,” “unprepared” means “perfect,” and “rejection” is the same as “infatuation.” Oh, and “svelte” means “pudgy.”

Yeah.

Got any new vocabulary you want to add?

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