Word of the Day

: May 17, 2007

fulminate

verb FULL-muh-nayt

What It Means

: to send forth censures or invectives

fulminate in Context

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."