luftmensch

Pronounced: LUFT-men(t)sh, noun

Notes: The word looks slightly familiar, but I cannot recall where I may have read it (and I don’t know the meaning)

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Yesterday’s word

The word assonance is “the use of words with the same or similar vowel sounds but with different end consonants”. An example of assonance is the “o” sounds in the phrase A host of golden daffodils.

First usage

Our word came into English in the mid-1700s

Background / Comments

As I noted yesterday, I definitely remember coming across our word – in the C. S. Lewis book The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader” – book #3 of the “Chronicles of Narnia”. It has the wonderful opening line: There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. I didn’t look up the word, but from the context, I assumed it had to do with a poetic technique. Our word came from French, which came from the the Latin words ad- (to) and the verb sonare (to sound), which came from the noun sonus (sound).