Hooked on new words
Another interesting entry today in my Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day:
meretricious (= alluring by false show) has not lost its strong etymological connection with the Latin word for “prostitute” (meretrix). A “meretricious marriage” is one that involves either unlawful sexual connection or lack of capacity on the part of one party. Outside law, though, the word is typically figurative, meaning “tawdry and showy without substance or merit” — e.g.: “Of course, there’s also another reason to spurn some of these costly new mansions. . . . They look like starter homes on steroids, like Disney cartoons, like health clubs and encyclopedias of kitsch. We’re talking bad taste. Tacky, gross, ostentatious, meretricious, vulgar, fake, phony, dreadful.” Colin Campbell, “Historic Real Estate Market Exists Far Afield,” Atlanta J. & Const., 27 Nov. 2001, at B3.
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Posted on May 28, 2009 12:00 pm, in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. 4 Comments.
Ha. Just got the title of the post. Good one. Great word, that.
How could I have existed all this time without knowing what ‘meretricious’ means (he said with complete sincerity). I know I’ve heard the word any number of times, but I just kind of let it slide by without bothering to investigate. Thanks for adding to the vocabulary.
And shame on me. I’ll be spending the rest of the day looking for a sentence to use it in. (…in which to use it? wherein it shall be imminently appropriate? D’oh!)
Nathan,
Don’t sweat the prepositions. “Use it in” is right. The rule against ending a sentence with prepositions is bogus.
Yeah, but it’s so much fun bending your head into a pretzel trying to figure out an alternate sentence structure.