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Circumforaneous

Posted: Thu Oct 18, 2012 4:11 pm
by Slava
With Halloween coming up, I thought this might be a fun one to toss out there. It means wandering from house to house, or market to market. One example I saw was of a circumforaneous fiddler. One could also speak of Christmastide carolers as being circumforaneous.

Halloween is when we have circumforaneous child beggars out and about.

Re: Circumforaneous

Posted: Thu Oct 18, 2012 7:14 pm
by Philip Hudson
Circumforaneous is a good choice for a Good Word, Slava. We have several circum words in English. They might be discussed together.

In James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, "Natty" Bumppo circumnavigated things instead of walking around them. I was eight years old when I read these books and it was my first conscious introduction to the prefix circum. I thought, and think, it is a pretty fancy word to describe the wanderings of a backwoodsman.