Word of the Day for Thursday, July 18, 2013
poetaster \POH-it-as-ter\, noun:
an inferior poet; a writer of indifferent verse.
Someone who writes verses but does not produce this essence is called a "poetaster." A poetaster is a fraudulent poet, a non-poet.
-- Frederick Busch, Letters to a Fiction Writer, 2000
Rotten as a poetaster or a second-rate musician reduced to beggary.
-- Carmen Boullosa, Cleopatra Dismounts, 2003
Poetaster entered English in the late 1500s. It is a combination of the word poet and the rarely used Latin suffix -aster which denotes something that imperfectly resembles or mimics the true thing.
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