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Jan 6, 2015
This week’s theme
Words relating to books

This week’s words
bildungsroman
longueur
peripeteia
locus classicus
litterateur

longueur
Photo: Worak

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

longueur

PRONUNCIATION:
(long-GUHR)

MEANING:
noun: A long and dull passage in a work of literature.

ETYMOLOGY:
From French longueur (length), from Latin longus (long). Ultimately from the Indo-European root del- (long), which also gave us lounge, lunge, linger, longitude, long, belong, and along. Earliest documented use: 1791.

USAGE:
“Even the sainted Douglas Adams wasn’t above the occasional infuriatingly indulgent longueur, such as basing the whole of his least good book on an extended metaphor involving cricket.”
Euan Ferguson; And Another Thing; The Observer (London, UK); Oct 11, 2009.

See more usage examples of longueur in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
He who listens to truth is not less than he who utters truth. -Kahlil Gibran, poet and artist (6 Jan 1883-1931)

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