circumforaneous love

circumforaneous

Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Going about, as from market-place to market-place; walking or wandering from house to house; vagrant; vagabond.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Wandering from place to place or market to market.
  • adjective by extension Indirect, roundabout, or unnecessarily complex.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin circum ("round about") (compare English circum-) with -foraneous, from forum ("market place").

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Examples

  • Proverb: I mean those circumforaneous Wits whom every Nation calls by the Name of that Dish of Meat which it loves best.

    Spectator, April 24, 1711 1711

  • In the first Place I must observe, that there is a Set of merry Drolls, whom the common People of all Countries admire, and seem to love so well, _that they could eat them_, according to the old Proverb: I mean those circumforaneous Wits whom every Nation calls by the Name of that

    The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays Joseph Addison 1695

  • Let the megalophonous grasshopper sound a blast and summon hither the perfunctory and circumforaneous Tumble-Bug, to the end that excavations may be made and learning gather new treasures. "

    Sketches New And Old Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 1922

  • Let the megalophonous grasshopper sound a blast and summon hither the perfunctory and circumforaneous Tumble-Bug, to the end that excavations may be made and learning gather new treasures. "

    Sketches New and Old Mark Twain 1872

  • Let the megalophonous grasshopper sound a blast and summon hither the perfunctory and circumforaneous Tumble-Bug, to the end that excavations may be made and learning gather new treasures. "

    Sketches New and Old, Part 3. Mark Twain 1872

Comments

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  • Going about or abroad; walking or wandering from house to

    house.

    November 25, 2007