• adoxography •
Pronunciation: æ-dahk-sahg-rê-fi • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: Fine prose written about a trivial, insignificant or base subject.
Notes: This word comes with the complete panoply of all the derivational relatives of all words ending in -graphy: adoxographer, adoxographic(al), adoxographically, and adoxograph "an adoxographic work".
In Play: The only reason I see for "fine" being in this definition in most dictionaries is that exalted authors undertook it in the late 19th century as a joke. If we eliminate that one word (for which no linguistic reason exists), it becomes quite topical: "Most of the social media is flooded with adoxography." In other words: "Did you read Godfrey's adoxographical Facebook post today?"
Word History: Today's Good Word was based on Greek adoxos "obscure, ignoble", comprising a(n)- "not, without" + doxa "glory, praise". A(n)- is the Greek version of PIE ne/no "not", which we see in Lithuanian ne "no, not", Russian and other Slavic languages undisturbed as ne "not", Welsh na "no", Breton nann "no", Hindi and Bengali na "not", Marathi naahi "not", German nein "no", and English no. Doxa descended from PIE dek'/dok'= "to take, accept, receive", as in Sanskrit dasasyati "is gracious, shows honor", Greek dekhesthai "to accept", Latin docere "to teach", and German Zeche "bill, check". -Graphy comes from Greek graphia "description", based on graphein "to write", which Greek inherited from PIE gerbh- "to scratch", which also turns up in German kerben "to notch", Dutch kerven "to carve", and English carve. (Now a non-adoxographic word of praise to newcomer Vincent Walker for suggesting today's potentially topical Good Word.)
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