Cool word: Marmoreal.

[NNadir]

Over in the history forum, I was writing about my planned birthday wanderings in a bookstore, and decided to check out a review of one of the books I'm thinking about.

I called up a review of the book, this one, and came across the word, marmoreal.

marmoreal
adjective
mar·​mo·​re·​al mär-ˈmȯr-ē-əl
variants or less commonly marmorean
mär-ˈmȯr-ē-ən
: of, relating to, or suggestive of marble or a marble statue especially in coldness or aloofness

The context is this:

The Plato found in these pages, wonderfully evoked by Romm’s tense, insightful prose and massively substantiated by an extensive bibliography, is the very opposite of marmoreal in every way. In a world where a four billion dollar podcast-bro ecosystem worships the marmoreal on a daily, hourly basis, that alone makes the book extremely welcome.

Even as an old man, I love coming across a new word, a good one too, in this context.

[3catwoman3]

1. I, too, love earning new words, and always will.

And if we ever need a word to rhyme with arboreal, now we know there is one -

[NNadir]

2. Spoken like a true poet.

[Harker]

3. I've been to the Lincoln marmoreal.

[rog]

4. That's great. I've always been curious about the word 'marmorated' ...

... as in 'brown marmorated stink bug', one of the banes of my garden, if they show up. I never bothered to look it up, but now I know it means 'overlaid with marble'. Oxford English Dictionary says it's obsolete, and their only evidence of its use is in 1731 (?). I don't know if that's accurate, but now it's obvious why it was used to name this bug.

Thanks for this post!

Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (overlaid with marble)