A festoon is a festive ornament. So to be “festooned” means to be decorated in festive ornaments. A festoon used to be a specific kind of ornament, in which flowers, foliage, and fruit were fastened to and suspended by long ribbons. It has now come to mean any type of celebratory ornamentation.
Considering how our calendar [...]
Words I Love
Pretentious —
Category Archives: Pretentious
Festooned
Coterie
The French know how to party, or possibly how to enslave people. If you ever wanted solid evidence look at the following words, all from French or Old French:
escort
entourage
attendants
retinue
cortege
A coterie is a “group of people who associates with one frequently”, and is my favorite, although “cortege” nearly meets it for Most Pompous Word Ever. All [...]
Agency
The OED has the definition of “agency” I’m interested in listed first:
The faculty of an agent or of acting; active working or operation; action, activity.
In typical OED style, I can’t fucking understand that. God bless you, Random House (def. 10):
a means of exerting power or influence; instrumentality
I did not know this definition of “agency” until [...]