panegyrist - n. - orator that delivers praise
Admittedly, I gleaned "panegyrist" from last night's reading of Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure. Sometimes I think that the only reason why I bother reading challenging classics is to keep from mental deterioration, so common during these times of excessive fire stick usage. Contemplating the denotation, I concluded that perhaps–like the complex syntax of Hardy's voice–articulate panegyrists are a rarity today. Case in point, a friend of mine whose thirty-year-old daughter could be a top panegyrist if she sought that goal commented that Meghan Markel did not resort to the commonplace "um" or "and um" during her recent interview with Oprah, whereas fastidious I, the former high-school public speaking teacher, picked up on many "and um" combinations that she used as transitions between topics. Where am I going with this? It could be that viewers are starting to become inured to what constitutes the rhetorical status quo.
Because I am somewhat of a geek when it comes to the presentation of the English language, I often wonder that if people wrote and spoke like Hardy and his contemporaries, they would be happier. Of course, it would take a lot of effort on their part, but if people did mind their p's and q's in this domain, would they feel more confident about themselves and consequently take on a more optimistic view of the world?
Seriously, I don't know. But I may be thinking about it all day now. Care to join me?
#word of the day, #vocabulary, #writers, #writers and poets, #words, #inspiration, #optimism, #inspiring words
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