Word of the Day Archive
Friday June 13, 2003
gnomic \NOH-mik\ , adjective:
Uttering, containing, or characterized by maxims; wise and pithy.
A long pause, during which the group reflects on this gnomic pronouncement.
-- Ruth Shalit, "Send in the clowns", Salon, June 21, 2000
They consisted of strange, short, sometimes witty, sometimes gnomic, often semiautobiographical essays about architecture.
-- Geoff Nicholson, Female Ruins
But the young man's gnomic utterances -- that life is "a journey" and "a big circle" -- might reflect not Buddhist-tinged wisdom so much as the fact that he has been skating around in circles for years.
-- Gary Kamiya, "Flight of the wonder boy", Salon, February 14, 2002
Gnomic derives from Greek gnomikos, from gnome, "intelligence, hence an expressed example of intelligence," from gignoskein, "to know."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for gnomic
