This week’s theme
Book titles that became words

This week’s words
brave new world
deipnosophist
Lord of the Flies
Hudibrastic


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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(hyoo-duh-BRAS-tik)

MEANING:

adjective: Mock-heroic; playfully burlesque or satirical.
noun: A piece of verse or writing in this style.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Hudibras (published in three parts in 1663, 1664, and 1678), a mock-heroic satirical poem by Samuel Butler. Earliest documented use: 1712.

NOTES:

Butler’s Hudibras follows a pompous knight and his squire through comic misadventures, satirizing the religious and political quarrels of his time. Its rollicking style gave us the word Hudibrastic to describe a mock-heroic verse, often in rhyming eight-syllable couplets.

USAGE:

“But so far from writing a panegyric, he would scourge the Province with the lash of a Hudibrastic as a harlot is scourged at the public post.”
John Barth; Sot-Weed Factor; Doubleday; 1960.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: