Sunday, September 22, 2013

Fwd: Parnassian: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dictionary.com <doctor@dictionary.com>
Date: 2013/9/20
Subject: Parnassian: Dictionary.com Word of the Day
To: "Hector William G." <hectorpinillos@gmail.com>

Word of the Day for Friday, September 20, 2013

Parnassian \pahr-NAS-ee-uhn\, adjective:

1. pertaining to poetry.
2. pertaining to Mount Parnassus.
3. of, pertaining to, or noting a school of French poets of the latter half of the 19th century, characterized chiefly by a belief in art for art's sake, by an emphasis on metrical form, and by the repression of emotive elements: so called from Le Parnasse Contemporain, the title of their first collection of poems, published in 1866.
4. a member of the Parnassian school of French poets.

However, your quest is dignified by its very disinterestedness; it is distanced from real human concerns and suffering; it is Parnassian, academic, aloof, elitist.
-- David Lambkin, The Hanging Tree, 1998

Then coming down from those Parnassian heights you have university libraries, and private research libraries, and then maybe the big public libraries, and then district and branch libraries, and school libraries, hospital libraries, libraries in prisons, and long-term mental institutions.
-- Ian Sansom, The Case of the Missing Books, 2010

Parnassian comes from a school of French poets whose first collection of poems was called Le Parnasse Contemporain.

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