October 2, 2006

Lucubration

A “devoted” reader writes of how much is enjoyed my “timely and lucubracious” OoNs. “Timely,” I get. I had to look up lucubracious. It was not all that rewarding and certainly not all that comforting.

In my source I found that my correspondent may have misspelled it, for it is listed only as the noun lucubration and not as an adjective at all. [Maybe as an adjective, it gets the “c” instead of the “t,” but Webster didn’t bother to say.]

Lucubration comes from the Latin lucubrare meaning to work by lamplight or work produced at night. It has come to mean 1) laborious study or meditation and 2) studied or pretentious expression in speech or writing. As my correspondent shouldn’t have any idea when I work, I can only take it that my writing seems pretentious. It’s not the first time such has been suggested, though it’s been a while. “Cute,” once, “pedantic” on occasion, but not yet “lucubracious.”

On the other hand (one needs colleagues at a time like this), it is not an inept word for us clergy. Perhaps one might say we often seem to have such a penchant. Considering the burdens holiness often places upon us, it is not all that difficult to confuse dignity with pomposity.

Perhaps we — prelates and real people alike — might be even more attentive to the reasons for the current and frequent pronouncements of some of the primates around our Communion. As Kermit of Sesame Street might surely understand, it is not all that easy being purple.

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