MOLIMINOUS

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MOLIMINOUS

Postby Dr. Goodword » Wed Jan 24, 2007 12:19 am

• moliminous •

Pronunciation: mê-li-mi-nês • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: 1. Massive, huge, momentous, having a great impact and of great importance. 2. Laboriously created, made with the greatest of effort and endeavor—like our Good Word series.

Notes: Today's rather rare word is the adjective from molimen "great effort" taken very carefully from Latin (see Word History). You may use it as an adverb if you add the usual suffix -ly. Since this adjective is derived from a noun there is no need to create one with -ness or -ity (moliminosity). Most of us couldn't pronounce it, anyway.

In Play: The meaning of today's Good Word oscillates depending on whether the focus is on the work producing something or the thing produced. If it is the process, the adverb is usually more suitable: "Derek struggled moliminously for 53 years counting all the words in English before giving up for the lack of a definition of the word word." The adjective usually fits the product better: "Rhoda Book's moliminous encyclopedia of the universe dwarfs the Wikipedia."

Word History: The noun underlying today's word, molimen "great exertion, effort", was traced letter-for-letter from the Latin noun. The Latin noun was derived from a shorter one, moles "large mass, pile, heap" which probably started out as *mogh-les (where the asterisk indicates we have no written evidence of it) from Proto-Indo-European mogh-/megh- "great, large". This root also underlies English much and that old Scottish standby, mickle. If so, the same root also turns up in Sanskrit maha "great" that we see in maharaja "great king" and mahatma "great one", as in Mahatma Gandhi. (Speaking of great, this was a great if not moliminous word itself, and we thank Jeremy Busch for suggesting it.)
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gailr
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Postby gailr » Wed Jan 24, 2007 8:36 pm

The Latin noun was derived from a shorter one, moles "large mass, pile, heap"
Thus making a mountain out of a moles' hill?

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Postby Bailey » Wed Jan 24, 2007 11:26 pm

If you had Piles you might be thinking fundamentaly moliminous.

mark can-you-say-hemorr-hoids? Bailey

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Postby gailr » Thu Jan 25, 2007 2:12 am

Bailey, Bailey, Bailey. Impressionable minds read this board, desperate for vocabulary and stuff.

Let us strive for the more high-falutin' words; e.g.: Shakespeare's "vicious mole of nature"...

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Postby Perry » Thu Jan 25, 2007 10:12 am

If you had Piles you might be thinking fundamentaly moliminous.

mark can-you-say-hemorr-hoids? Bailey
I just try to make my fundement ignore them.
"Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once. Lately it hasn't been working."
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Postby Bailey » Thu Jan 25, 2007 11:00 am

Bailey, Bailey, Bailey. Impressionable minds read this board, desperate for vocabulary and stuff.

Let us strive for the more high-falutin' words; e.g.: Shakespeare's "vicious mole of nature"...
Gosh, Gailr you brought up the piles.

mark ???? Bailey

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Postby Perry » Thu Jan 25, 2007 3:58 pm

I don't think that Gail had problems with piles or hemorrhoids (as words, I can't vouch for anything else). She just needed an opening to write vicious mole of nature.
"Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once. Lately it hasn't been working."
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Postby gailr » Fri Jan 26, 2007 12:24 am

Well said, old mole!

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Re: MOLIMINOUS

Postby Stargzer » Sat Jan 27, 2007 9:17 pm

...
Word History: The noun underlying today's word, molimen "great exertion, effort", was traced letter-for-letter from the Latin noun. The Latin noun was derived from a shorter one, moles "large mass, pile, heap" which probably started out as *mogh-les (where the asterisk indicates we have no written evidence of it) from Proto-Indo-European mogh-/megh- "great, large". ...
And Avogadro's number, the number of atoms or molecules needed to make up a mass equal to the substance's atomic or molecular mass in grams (6.022 x 10[sup]23[/sup]), is a very large number, the number of atoms or molecules in a mole of a substance.

(My wife complains I can't remember to take out the trash, but it seems I can remember high school and college chemistry.)
Regards//Larry

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