Thursday word: foudroyant
foudroyant (foo-DROI-uhnt, foo-drwa-YAHN) - adj., occurring suddenly and with great severity; stunning, dazzling, overwhelming.
The alternate pronunciations being how French you keep it, for French it comes from: borrowed in the 1830s, where it meant struck by lightning, past participle of foudroyer, to strike by lightning, from foudre, lightning, ultimately from the Latin root fulgur, lightning, from flagrare, to burn. This is rare outside of medical contexts, where it's used only in the first sense, and even there it's largely been replaced by fulminant (and indeed, at merriam-webster.com, searches on foudroyant are redirected to fulminant). Which is a pity as having a word meaning "as if struck by lightning" seems very useful.
We stepped back as Helen blazed with foudroyant anger.
---L.
The alternate pronunciations being how French you keep it, for French it comes from: borrowed in the 1830s, where it meant struck by lightning, past participle of foudroyer, to strike by lightning, from foudre, lightning, ultimately from the Latin root fulgur, lightning, from flagrare, to burn. This is rare outside of medical contexts, where it's used only in the first sense, and even there it's largely been replaced by fulminant (and indeed, at merriam-webster.com, searches on foudroyant are redirected to fulminant). Which is a pity as having a word meaning "as if struck by lightning" seems very useful.
We stepped back as Helen blazed with foudroyant anger.
---L.