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Word Wednesday: Byronic

Posted on January 5, 2022 Updated on May 31, 2023

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The Byronic hero, incapable of love or capable only of an impossible love, suffers endlessly. He is solitary, languid [and] his condition exhausts him. If he wants to feel alive, it must be in the terrible exaltation of a brief and destructive action.

Albert Camus
The Stranger

Modern Byronic Heroes Image Two — Image Credit: Slide Serve

The Byronic Hero is a character notable for being sullen, withdrawn, hard to like and hard to know but, usually possessing a rich inner life and a softer side, accessible only to a special few.

Byronic Hero
TV Tropes

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Word Wednesday: Quondam

Posted on September 16, 2020 Updated on August 31, 2021

This is, clearly, an obscure word. It sounds like a portmanteau of quantum and condom. Hmmm…Quantum Condoms, for an “out of this world” experience! Whadda ya’ think? Can you make a sentence with this word? ~Vic

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Word Wednesday: Kaput

Posted on July 8, 2020 Updated on August 31, 2021

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Origin

The adjective kaput:
“ruined, done for, out of order”
is used only in [a] predicate position, not in [an] attributive position. [T]hat is, you can only say “My car is kaput” but, not “I’ve got a kaput car.”

Kaput comes from the German colloquial adjective kaputt:
“broken, done for, out of order, (of food) spoiled”
which was taken from the German idiom capot machen, a partial translation of the French idioms faire capot and être capot:
“to win (or lose) all the tricks (in the card game piquet).”

Faire capot literally means “to make a bonnet or hood” and its usage in Piquet may be from an image of throwing a hood over or hoodwinking one’s opponent. Unsurprisingly, kaput became widely used in English early in World War I.