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Sep 7, 2020
This week’s themeEponyms This week’s words Ballardian Griselda Homeric Juno Pavlovian 
 Previous week’s theme Horses 
A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg“Don’t be a Johnny!” Chances are you have said something like this some time. (Replace Johnny with the name of someone you know.) What you meant was: Don’t be whiny or don’t be greedy or don’t be finicky or a quality that characterized Johnny. If so, you made a personal eponym, a word coined after someone. This week we’ll see five eponyms, from Greek ep- (after) + -onym (name), coined after characters from both fact and fiction. Ballardian
PRONUNCIATION:
(ba-LAHR-dee-uhn)
MEANING:
adjective: Relating to a dystopian world, especially one characterized by social and environmental degradation, assisted by technology.
ETYMOLOGY:
After the novelist and short story writer J.G. Ballard (1930-2009), whose
works depict such post-apocalyptic scenarios.
USAGE:
“‘Bunker’, self-evidently a work for our times, shimmers with a Ballardian
imagery of disaster and melt-down.” Ian Thomson; Bunker: Building for the End Times by Bradley Garrett - Review; The Spectator (London, UK); Aug 22, 2020. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it. -Edith
Sitwell, poet (7 Sep 1887-1964)
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