Wednesday, November 05, 2014

word of the day: macaronic

The word of the day is macaronic:


1. composed of or characterized by Latin words mixed with vernacular words or non-Latin words given Latin endings.
2. composed of a mixture of languages.
3. mixed; jumbled.
< Medieval Latin macarōnicus < dialectal Italian maccarone macaroni + Latin -icus -ic (dictionary.com


"In The Espresso Murders, Alfonsi Lombardini, accused of snuffing out eighteen intellectual drifters mid-cappuccino, confronts a formidable antagonist, Tanagra Canasta, whom he wins over to belief in his innocence once he's distracted her affection from one of the victims, a mustachioed poet of little promise and even less talent who'd lived in her mother's closet one bleak New England winter and emerged in the spring with a parody of Paradise Lost in macaronic language and a scarlet slipper clutched to his hypochondriacal chest."

 - Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness: A Dictionarrative

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