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Sunday, 4 March 2018

Sunday Rest: gloriole. Word Not To Use Today.

This post has been put under a Blogger Warning, which means that no one will be able to read it without consenting to seeing something really rather awful. 

I'm not sure why this has happened, but I have edited this post to swerve (I hope) the problem.

There's a Northern English term for an untidy cupboard which consists of the word glory followed by the word hole. It also has meanings in glassblowing (small furnace for re-heating glass); mining (dip caused by subsidence over a mine); oil drilling (an underwater extraction technique); and dam construction (part of an overflow system).

There must other meanings of this term, too, but I really don't want to investigate them.

Anyway, none of these terms has anything to do with the word gloriole.

File:DD-Frauenkirche-Gloriole-Brot-Wein.jpg
Frauenkirche, Dresden. What the white squidgy stuff in the middle of the golden gloriole is I'm not sure. Photo by SchiDD

Nevertheless, the word halo means the same thing as gloriole, and is perhaps safer.

Word Not To Use Today: gloriole. This word was made up in the 1800s from the Latin gloriōla, a small glory. (Glory, as it happens, was the term for halo in the Middle Ages, but after that we made do perfectly happily with halo and nimbus until the 1800s - and perhaps should do again).


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