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#162629 10/18/06 08:00 PM
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I like this word. According to the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, its root verb, objurgate, means "to give a severe rebuke to, scold, chide". The only context where I've come across it is a novel by Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim, where Amis writes: "[someone was] reproved by the objurgatory jeweller as excessively 'dignant' in demeanour."

Would you say that the use of "reproved" and "objurgatory" is redundant in this sentence? Not that it matters much, probably K. Amis was also a fan of the word...


#162630 10/18/06 08:39 PM
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what a coincidence:
Tuesday, October 10, 2006 12:28 AM
the worthless word for the day is: objurgatory

[L. objurgatorius] /ob JURG uh tor ee/
expressing (a harsh or violent) rebuke

"[Mrs. Poyser] was remarkable for the facility with
which she could relapse from her official objurgatory
tone to one of fondness."
- George Eliot, Adam Bede (1859)

""You did not head for your pretended creek," he
added, after dealing in some objurgatory remarks that
we do not deem it necessary to record, "but steered
for that bluff, where every soul on board would have
been drowned, had we gone ashore."
- James Fenimore Cooper, The Pathfinder (1841)

"I note and can to some extent sympathize with the
objurgatory tone of certain critics who feel that I
write too much because, quite wrongly, they believe
they ought to have read most of my books before
attempting to criticize a recently-published one."
- Conversations with Joyce Carol Oates (1989)

#162631 10/19/06 06:00 PM
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A relative? Not redundant in that the term seems intended to characterize the jeweler, but for no particular reason the word seems more apt in describing a commentary or similar expression than 'one who objurgates'. Curiously, the works of that same Cooper mentioned was the subject of a treatment by Twain that was nothing less than objurgatory [and hilarious].

http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/fclo.html

[Some objurgation is deserved for a poster that cannot spell than on the first try.]

Last edited by Aramis11; 10/19/06 06:12 PM.

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