Word of the Day for Sunday, September 2, 2007
solecism \SOL-uh-siz-uhm\, noun:
1. A nonstandard usage or grammatical construction; also, a minor blunder in speech.
2. A breach of good manners or etiquette.
3. Any inconsistency, mistake, or impropriety.
An accurate report of anything that has ever been said in any parliament would be blather, solecism, verbiage and nonsense.
-- "Hansard of the Highlands", Times (London), February 17, 2001
Her English is good, apart from a few stubborn idiosyncrasies of preposition and tense, but these are music to me, sung solecisms -- how else to describe "I am already loving you," her first declaration of feeling for me, now two years old?
-- Ronan Bennett, The Catastrophist
In those days smoking in the streets was an unpardonable solecism.
-- Edmund Yates, Recollections
. . .another of her fabrications or flat-footed solecisms or, at any rate, a simple indication of the boundless ineptitude with which she manages Leonardo's affairs.
-- R.M. Berry, Leonardo's Horse
Solecism comes from Latin soloecismus, from Greek soloikizein, "to speak incorrectly," from soloikos, "speaking incorrectly," literally, "an inhabitant of Soloi," a city in ancient Cilicia where a dialect regarded as substandard was spoken.
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for solecism
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