adoxography
Definitions
Wiktionary
- n. Good writing on a minor subject.
This word comes from the Greek ‘doxa,’ opinion, praise, and ‘graphein,’ write, express by written characters.
Examples
“Elizabethan schoolboys,' Mr. Kadri writes, 'were commonly taught adoxography, the art of eruditely praising worthless things....The first English treatise on the subject appeared in 1593 and contained essays celebrating deformity, ugliness, poverty, blindness, drunkenness, sterility, and stupidity. Its preface claimed that it would be particularly useful to lawyers.”
Walter Olson, 'Justice Served, Sometimes,' The Wall Street Journal, September 8, 2005
“David, who drops words like 'gerascophobia' (fear of growing old) and 'adoxography' (good writing on a trivial subject) into conversations as other men drop Gs from participles, was born in Shanghai in 1934, worked on several British newspapers and four Canadian ones before joining The Canadian in 1968.”
