Pronounced: sat-uhr-NAY-lee-uh, noun
Notes: I think I’ve seen our word somewhere
Yesterday’s word
The word eclogue refers to “a poem in which shepherds converse”
First usage
Our word came into English in the late 1500s
Background / Comments
As I noted, our word is a highly specific one. Our word traces way back to the Idylls of the Greek poet Theocritus. However, we got the word from the Roman poet Virgil in his ten Eclogues (also called Bucolics). In the Renaissance and through the 1600s, eclogues were popular (albeit not very formal). Eclogues fell out of favor with the Romantic poets. As we have becomes a more urban society, we tend to understand less of rural conversation. These days, our word can refer to poems involving people other than shepherds, and may be laced with irony.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 