Word of the Day Archive
Monday September 24, 2012
sententious \sen-TEN-shuhs\
, adjective:
1. Abounding in pithy aphorisms or maxims: a sententious book.
2. Given to excessive moralizing; self-righteous.
3. Given to or using pithy sayings or maxims: a sententious poet.
4. Of the nature of a maxim; pithy.
For he was a poet and drowned untimely, and his verse, mild as it is and formal and sententious, sends forth still a frail fluty sound like that of a piano organ played in some back street resignedly by an old Italian organ-grinder in a corduroy jacket.
-- Virginia Woolf, "Street Haunting: A London Adventure," Collected Essays
It was inconceivable that she was using the boring, sententious, contentious Shepherd for anything but a hollow threat to him, but this semblance of wrongdoing could now be turned to advantage.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano
Sententious is related to sententia, the Latin root for the word sentence. The Latin word sententiosus meant "full of meaning, pithy."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for sententious
