Sunday 24 October 2010

Infulminate




Infulminate
means to render thunderous. The word was invented by the American diplomat and revolutionary Joel Barlow for his wonderfully pompous epic The Columbiad. His reasoning was that fulmen was the Latin for lightning (as opposed to lightening) and that the word sounds fantastic.

Where yon blue ridges hang their cliffs on high
And suns infulminate the stormful sky.


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