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Friday 17 August 2012

Word To Use Today: sumptuous.


Sumptuary laws are ones which aim to restrain luxury, especially by limiting people's spending.

They've rather gone out of fashion, haven't they. Hurray!


So let's have a sumptuous feast:


Peter Claesz. Still Life with a Peacock Pie. 

Peacock pie? Can that be more sumptuous than a juicy peach?



In any case, whatever you eat, why not do it dressed in sumptuous silk?


Jacob Andiaensz

Or velvet:


Jacopo Amigoni.

While ingesting some sumptuous verse:

A casement high and triple-arch’d there was,
All garlanded with carven imag’ries
Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,
And diamonded with panes of quaint device,
Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,
As are the tiger-moth’s deep-damask’d wings;
And in the midst, ’mong thousand heraldries,
And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,
A shielded scutcheon blush’d with blood of queens and kings.

(That's from The Eve of St Agnes by John Keats.)

And that luxury is absolutely free.

Word To Use Today: sumptuous. This word comes from the Old French somptueux, from the Latin sumptuōsus, which means costly, from sumptus, expense, from sūmere, to spend.


1 comment:

  1. That quote from Keats has haunted me for years and indeed I have a whole thing about it in one of my books....not sure which of the Egerton Hall trilogy it is but I think Pictures of the Night. LOVE that satin and velvet too!

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