Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Word of the week

Some people collect bulky items like furniture, other people collect smaller things like figurines, and other people collect very light things like baseball cards.

Being a mobile Methodist preacher, I try to keep my collections limited to very easily moved items. One thing that I have recently decided to begin collecting again are those light, highly portable, and easily packed items known as words!

Yes, common everyday words. Well, not exactly everyday words mind you, but words with their own unique flavor! Such gems like the rarely heard word, Mellifluous!

Mellifluous is a fun sort of a word. It comes from the Latin components: Mel / Mell, which means honey and fluous comes to us from fluere, which means to flow. Putting them together and the resulting word refers to something that smoothly flows like honey.

Using the word is simple, but pronouncing might be a bit more difficult. It is pronounced \meh - li* - flu  us\, if that helps any.

In a sentence, The poets reading of his collected works was wonderfully calming as he mellifluously recited his innermost thoughts and feelings.

In other words, his words flowed smoothly from his lips as honey might smoothly flow from a bottle.

* (as in the word lit, without the t)

Hope you enjoyed this weeks fun vocabulary word!

Brother Gary Maskell

Pastor, Gurdon First United Methodist Church