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Apr 4, 1999

This week's theme
Words that go out of their way to not apply to themselves

This week's words
phonetic
abbreviation
monosyllabic
hemidemisemiquaver
descender
diminutive
opuscule

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opuscule

opuscule (o-PUS-kyool) noun

A small, minor work.

[Latin opusculum, diminutive of opus, work.]

"The second part of Stillman's dissertation treated the small opuscule of a Mr. Henry Dark who, while living in England before emigrating to Boston, was presumed to have been John Milton's secretary. In a short text of 1690 entitled The New Babel, Dark made America equal in status to the promised land of the Old Testament."
Pascale-Anne Brault; Translating the Impossible Debt; Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction; Mar 22, 1998.

Why is the word that describes a small work bigger than the one that describes a larger work?

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