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foudroyant

Printable Version
Pronunciation: fu-droy-ênt, fu-dwa-yaN Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: 1. Dazzling, spectacular. 2. (Medicine) Occurring suddenly and with great severity, fulminant.

Notes: Since this word only entered English in the mid-19th century, it has not had time to sire a lexical family. In fact, the Oxford English Dictionary still lists the French pronunciation as acceptable.

In Play: Foudroyant is flamboyant with equivalent sound effects: "Well, I have absolutely no idea what that halftime extravaganza was all about—but you have to admit it certainly was foudroyant." You can always find foudroyance around July 4th in the States: "The foudroyant fireworks display, accompanied by the 'oohs' and 'ahs' from the crowd, left an indelible impression of this year's Fourth of July celebration on everyone's mind."

Word History: Today's Good Word is another French borrowing, this time from the present participle of foudroyer "to strike with lightning", based on foudre "lightning", from Old French fouldre. Fouldre is what was left of Latin fulgur "lightning" after drifting down to French. Fulgur came from fulgere "to flash". The root of these words, fulg-, came from Proto-Indoeuropean bhel- "to shine, burn, be bright", which may be seen is Russian belyi "white" and belukha "beluga (whale)". This root came to English metathesized and ended up in blue, blank, black (the color of things burnt), blanch, blind, bleach, bleak, blaze, blond, and several others. (Today's foudroyant Good Word was recommended by Gordon Wray recently in the Agora.)

Dr. Goodword, alphaDictionary.com

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