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Nov 4, 2003
This week's theme
Eponyms

This week's words
Potemkin village
corybantic
Colonel Blimp
Simple Simon
rover boy

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

corybantic

(kor-i-BAN-tik) Pronunciation

adjective: Wild; frenzied; uncontrolled.

[After Corybant, an ancient priest of Phrygian goddess Cybele, who performed wild ecstatic dances in her worship.]

"The radio is nothing but a conduit through which pre-fabricated din can flow into our homes. And this din goes far deeper, of course, than the eardrums. It penetrates the mind, filling it with a babble of distractions, blasts of corybantic or sentimental music, continually repeated doses of drama that bring no catharsis, but usually create a craving for daily or even hourly emotional enemas."
Aldous Huxley; On Silence; 1946.

X-Bonus

It is often forgotten that (dictionaries) are artificial repositories, put together well after the languages they define. The roots of language are irrational and of a magical nature. -Jorge Luis Borges, writer (1899-1986)

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