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Lucubration Latin Study English Word Product Intensive Plural

Lucubration refers to laborious or intensive study, or the product of such study, often implying nocturnal effort by lamplight. It is commonly used in the plural to describe pompous or scholarly writing.

Lucubration refers to laborious or intensive study, or the product of such study, often implying nocturnal effort by lamplight. It is commonly used in the plural to describe pompous or scholarly writing.

Word lucubration
Date July 8, 2018
Type noun
Syllables loo-kyuh-BRAY-shun
Etymology Imagine someone studying through the night by the light of a dim candle or lamp. That image demonstrates perfectly the most literal sense of lucubration. Our English word derives from the Latin verb lucubrare, meaning "to work by lamplight." (That Latin root is related to lux, the Latin word for "light.") In its earliest known English uses, lucubration named both nocturnal study itself and a written product thereof. By the 1800s, however, the term had been broadened to refer to any intensive study (day or night), or a composition, especially a weighty one, generated as a result of such study. Nowadays, lucubration is most often used in its plural form and implies pompous or stuffy scholarly writing.
Examples The book is a collection of lucubrations on the effect advancements in computer science have on economic policy.

"Surely when we talk about our mental lives we're simply thinking of everything that makes human beings special, different—our thoughts, our language-based lucubration." — Tim Parks, The New York Review of Books, 21 Nov. 2016
Definition : laborious or intensive study; also : the product of such study — usually used in plural

Tags: wordoftheday::noun

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