wordmongery

English

Etymology

wordmonger +‎ -y

Noun

wordmongery (uncountable)

1. Clever writing or speaking, especially that which is superficially impressive but of very little substance.
   • 1845, The Spectator - Volume 18, page 423:

     The materials thus hastily collected have been hastily strung together, and sometimes with the vapid smartness and wordmongery of the magazine-contributor.

   • 1906, Joseph Dietzgen, Eugene Dietzgen, The Positive Outcome of Philosophy, page 182:

     Firstly, you must not expect too much from this science, for you cannot set contrary brains to rights by any logic. Secondly, you must not think too little of it, by regarding the matter as mere scholastic wordmongery and useless hairsplitting.

   • 1913, Quarterly Journal - University of North Dakota - Volume 3, page 256:

     We agree that the poetry of the stage we pronounce great is no mere wordmongery; not superficial, but the heart of the play; not its shell, but its life.

   • 1939, Frontiers of Democracy - Volume 6, page 149:

     These ideals have become mere meaningless abstractions or wordmongery.

2. The art of putting something into words, especially when done cleverly.
   • 1870, Pamphlets on Spiritualism, page 38:

     Though in mere wordmongery proficient, he failed to make out a case for supernaturalism.

   • 1949, William George Hoffman, Public Speaking for Businessmen, page 354:

     Words have the rigidities of people. They conceal what they would reveal and reveal what they would conceal. They mean much or nothing, and the humorist is alert to the ludicrous ineptitudes of wordmongery.

   • 2014, Raymond Macdonald Alden, Shakespeare (Routledge Revivals), →ISBN, page 195:

     Almost every kind of wordmongery is both practiced and ridiculed in the play: puns, quips, and conceits; bombastic and hyperbolic art-prose just then fancied in England under influences coming from Spain; alliteration and other forms of decorative tone-color; pedantic classicism, full of Latin phrases and etymologies; and sonneteering of the Petrarchan school.

3. (obsolete) The memorization of written texts.
   • 1839, John Abraham Heraud, Edward Higginson, The Educator:

     He flung away the wordmongery and rote-learning that was, and is, called education, and brought the child in contact with nature and reality.

   • 1842, The School and the Schoolmaster:

     The grand error is, that that is called knowledge, which is mere rote-learning and wordmongery.

   • 1867, Alexander Forrester, The Teacher's Text Book, page 253:

     Such may roam at will among the mysteries of technicalities; they may commit to memory, and that most accurately, a long series of definitions, and rules, and examples; but their whole acquisition is, after all, nought but a species of symbolism, or nominalism, or wordmongery, destitute of all practical benefit, either in the future use of the language or in the disciplining of the mind.

   • 1885, Annual Report of the Schol Committee of the City of New Bedford, page 96:

     As aids in the study of language we supplied plenty of books for reading in addition to the text books, and enjoined the teachers to have as much reading as possible, not for criticism or wordmongery, but for the simple sake of reading, and the gains in the acquirement of a copious vocabulary and the fluent power of expression which are the outcome of that beautiful practice.

Synonyms

• wordmongering

Anagrams

• merry-go-down