Re: pretentious words

On Apr 30, 3:18 pm, retrosorter <hrich...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I was leafing through a story in the April 29th Economist about the
election in France and I came across this sentence: "Ïn the first
round both candidates spent weeks sedulously cultivating their
faithful." It seemed from the context that "sedulously" meant
"assiduously" but not being familiar with the word, I checked my OED
Online that defined it ( the word "sedulous") as "Of persons or
agents: Diligent, active, constant in application to the matter in
hand; assiduous, persistent"

It seems to me that the writer's choice of the word "sedulously" was
pretentious as there are a host of well-known words such as
"assiduously," "dilligently" etc that could have been used and the
writer's selection of "sedulously" added nothing (except perhaps
confusion) to the article.

Then again, maybe I feel this way solely because I had never heard the
word "sedulous."

The question I am posing, therefore is, Are some words prententious or
is the pretense totally in the mind of the beholder?

Seem like a perfectly normal use of the word to me. It seems much more
appropriate than 'dilligently" which does not convey the same sense of
care.

" is the pretense totally in the mind of the beholder?"

Yes.

John Kane, Kingston ON Canada


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