SIALOQUENT

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Dr. Goodword
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SIALOQUENT

Postby Dr. Goodword » Tue Sep 16, 2008 11:22 pm

• sialoquent •

Pronunciation: sai-æ-lê-kwênt • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: (You aren't going to believe this) Spitting while talking! Sputtering saliva while speaking!

Notes: Today's Good Word has appeared in print exactly once, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and that was in Glossographia, or a dictionary interpreting such hard words as are now used by Thomas Blount, published in 1656. I don't think it was given a fair chance and I have chosen it for today's Good Word in an attempt to give it one. The adverb, of course, is sialoquently and the noun, sialoquence. Use it with care.

In Play: The foremost sialoquent character in American mythology is the cartoon character Daffy Duck: "Daffy Duck is so sialoquent, there isn't a dry eye in the house when he speaks." Few humans actually speak sialoquently except under extraordinary circumstances: "Frank Palaver, sialoquently sputtering as he does after a few drinks, pelted his colleagues with words and moisture none of them cared for."

Word History: Today's Good Word is a compound some Englishman created from Greek sialon "spittle" + Latin loquen(t)s "speaking", the present participle of loqui "to speak". Some etymologists have tried to relate sialon with German Speichel and English spit, but without a convincing explanation of what happened to the P in Greek. As for loqui, there was a Proto-Indo-European word tolkw- "speak" which ended up in Russian tolkovat' "to interpret". It is possible that the O and L underwent metathesis (switched places) in early Latin, resulting in tlokw-. Were this to have occurred, the initial T would have disappeared since Latin did not permit TL at the beginning of a word. The result would be a word spelled loqui [lokwi]. (Today's far, far-out word was suggested by Luciano Eduardo de Oliveira, who found it in a book Dr. Goodword himself is now reading: Reading the OED.)
• The Good Dr. Goodword

bnjtokyo

Postby bnjtokyo » Wed Sep 17, 2008 4:07 am

Thank you for a most interesting word. Kenneth Branagh made an excellent Hamlet, but his is the most sialoquent performance that I have ever seen. (He had to talk awfully fast to get in every word of the F1 and Q2 texts, and it is still four hours long!)

Perry Lassiter
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Postby Perry Lassiter » Wed Sep 17, 2008 11:18 am

I wish we had known this word around 1950 in high school. We had an English teacher we were sure was nearly 100! She had seen Lindy parade in NY and constantly reiterated the experience to us.
You had a choice with this teacher. You could either sit up front and hear her, or you could sit in back and stay mostly dry. To increase the spray, she frequently launched a diatribe against "slothful, slovenly boys." He vocabulary of words beginning with "s" and "sl" was immense!
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