Thursday, July 30, 2020

Word of the Week! Fulgent Richmond Writing

Word of the Week! Fulgent Richmond Writing As I write this, the gloom is almost palpable outside. We have heavy rain and lowering clouds. It is far from a fulgent day. Writing Consultant Griffin Myers suggested the word after she encountered it, as we do with so many interesting terms, in a class. The OED Online has it listed with a  frequency band of only 2 out of 8, meaning such words occur fewer than 0.01 times per million words in typical modern English usage. These are almost exclusively terms which are not part of normal discourse and would be unknown to most people. So our word may be on the way out the door with many other ancient but lovely adjectives. The OEDs usages vary. Wordsworth once described sunset in terms of it begin the fulgent West and a century later, a writer for Ebony noted a musicians fulgent keyboard technique. But the core sense of bright, shiny, or glittering remain, even if this word itself fades. Please nominate a word or metaphor useful in academic writing by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below. See all of our Metaphors of the Month  here  and Words of the Week  here. Gem image courtesy of  Pixabay free images.