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Wednesday, September 13, 2006
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Also From the Land of the Comment Thread... ...there's this question, in response to another commenter writing that someone looked "stentorian." Can you look stentorian or must you sound stentorian? Can we have a ruling UD? Er, let's see. "Word of the Day" says this: Adjective: Extremely loud. Stentorian comes from Stentor, a Greek herald in the Trojan War. According to Homer's Iliad, his voice was as loud as that of fifty men combined. They go on to give a bunch of examples, but UD'll give one of her own: When, in singing Henry Purcell's "Music for A While," UD raised her stentorian voice at the piano, her dog immediately ran to the other end of the house. I found one "looked stentorian" online, actually; from a piece by Tony Snow about a Bush/Gore debate: It was as if coaches had instructed the men to look stentorian or presidential or some such thing, thus prompting them to strike poses that seemed faintly silly and wholly unnatural. Based upon this admittedly singular -- though high-profile -- use (ain't he the President's press secretary?), UD hereby rules that the word is now in broad common use to mean pompous, stern, and old, and therefore you can look as well as sound "stentorian." |