

Jan 21, 2013 This week's theme

Eponyms



This week's words

silhouette

casanova

xanthippe

shrapnel

Don Juan



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"Proper names that have become improper and uncommonly common" is how the author Willard R. Espy described eponyms, and that is the theme for this week's words in AWAD: words coined from people's names. In our quest for eponyms, we are going to Europe this time, to France, Italy, England, Greece, and Spain. And we'll meet a finance minister, a seducer, a military officer, a philosopher's wife, and a womanizer. All aboard! silhouette PRONUNCIATION: (sil-oo-ET)

MEANING: noun: The outline of someone or something, filled in with a solid color.

verb tr.: To show in a silhouette.

ETYMOLOGY: After French finance minister Etienne de Silhouette (1709-1767). It's unclear how Silhouette's name became associated with this art form. Perhaps it was alluding to his austerity measures during the Seven Years' War, as a silhouette was a cheap way to making a portrait instead of a painting. It's also said that he was fond of hanging these kinds of portraits in his office. Earliest documented use: 1798.

USAGE: "It's just a silhouette. Many of us have met shadows of people and not the people."

Nompumelelo Precious Dlamini; Memoirs of Love Lessons; Red Lead Press; 2011.

See more usage examples of silhouette in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.



A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: In this world, you must be a bit too kind to be kind enough. -Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux, dramatist and novelist (1688-1763)





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