• morology •
Pronunciation: mê-rah-lê-jee • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: 1. Foolish or silly talk, nonsensical chatter. 2. The scientific study of silly talk. (?)
Notes: The -ology suffix on this word is misleading, since there is no scientific study of morons, the usual meaning of that suffix. That would be moronic. So, morologist means "someone who talks foolishly" rather than a student of morons. The adjective would be morologic or morological.
In Play: If you need a touch of gravitas or 'scientificity' when you talk of nonsense, here's the word for you: "I couldn't make heads or tails out the president's morology at his press conference today, could you?" You may find uses around the house, too: "Mom, all your reasons for grounding me are sheer morology, not logic."
Word History: Today's Good Word was taken from Middle French morologie, inherited from post-classical Latin morologia "foolish talking", which borrowed it from ancient Greek morologia "foolish talking". The Greek word was based on morologos "that talks foolishly", made up of moros "foolish, stupid" + -logos "word, idea". The neuter of Greek moros was moron, which was also used as a noun meaning "folly", a word English hungrily gobbled up. The word is not used to denote a person in Greek because the neuter usually represents inanimate categories. Moros is a cognate of Sanskrit murah "idiotic". Latin morus "foolish" is a loan-word from Greek.
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