Word to the Wise: Magniloquent

"Magniloquent" (mag-NIL-uh-kwent) refers to lofty or grandiose speech or expression. The word is from the Latin for "great" + "to speak."

Example (as used by Algis Valiunas in Commentary): "[Wallace] Stevens did for American poetic language what Saul Bellow was to do for prose, extending its boundaries, taking in the magniloquent, the arcane, the plainspoken, the gaudy, the low-rent."

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