fulminate

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 17, 2007 is: fulminate • \FULL-muh-nayt\  • verb : to send forth censures or invectives Examples: Jennie wrote an editorial for her town's local paper fulminating on the topic of dress codes in the public schools. Did you know? Lightning strikes more than once in the history of "fulminate." That word comes from the Latin "fulminare," meaning "to strike," a verb usually used to refer to lightning strikes -- not surprising since it sprang from "fulmen," Latin for "lightning." When "fulminate" was adopted into English in the 15th century, it lost much of its ancestral thunder and was used largely as a technical term for the issuing of formal denunciations by ecclesiastical authorities. But its original lightning spark remains in its suggestion of tirades so vigorous that, as one 18th-century bishop put it, they seem to be delivered "with the air of one who [has] divine Vengeance at his disposal." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.