rewording

[It's been an age since I posted anything on this blog. Facebook, for all its faults, stands in remarkably well for a blog site. But it has such short-term memory--it's all NOW NOW NOW--that nobody would think of going backward through the mis-named News Feed for the sort of gems that blogs nurture.]

vo·lup·tu·ous·ness

Do we really need a five-syllable, fourteen-letter word for this concept? My online dictionary offer voluptuosity as an alternative: fewer letter, more syllables. I'll concede that voluptic doesn't share the same aural quality of the original, for all its faults. How about voluptious (vo-lup-shuhs)?

Your suggestions welcome.

i·con·nois·seur

Recently coined on the fly during a visit by one of our Russian book vendors, John Emmerich. Defined as "a person who is especially competent to pass critical judgments on representations of some sacred personage, as Christ or a saint or angel, painted usually on a wood surface and venerated itself as sacred." Possible antonym of iconoclast. An iconnoisseur with antiquated art historical views on icons might jocularly be called an iconosaur.

Comments

[Ross]

Funny I should be looking at this. A very good friend of mine recently took voluptuous one step further, to splendid effect.

In remarking on her expanding silhouette, she remarked that she had become "volumptuous", a portmanteau blending of 'voluminous' and 'voluptuous'. Bravo, ZPW!