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Oct 15, 2008
This week's theme
Words about words

This week's words
epeolatry
univocalic
paragoge
semasiology
cacology

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

paragoge

PRONUNCIATION:
(par-uh-GO-jee)

MEANING:
noun: The addition of a letter or syllable at the end of a word, either through natural development or to add emphasis. For example, height-th for height.

ETYMOLOGY:
Via Latin, from Greek paragoge, from para- (beyond) + -agogue (leader).

USAGE:
"Henry Peacham cites the expansion of 'vile' to 'vilde' as an example of the rhetorical figure paragoge."
Stephen Booth; Shakespeare's Sonnets; Yale University Press; 2000.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
There are 1011 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers. -Richard Feynman, physicist, Nobel laureate (1918-1988)

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