AAFFLSTU

Word of the Week

A feature wherein TileHead highlights a word that is is especially interesting or unusual (and, incidentally, useful in Scrabble play):

AAFFLSTU

(unscramble the letters to form this week's word...)

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(answer below, after a little more spoiler space....)

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This week's word is...

AFFLATUS (n. pl. -ES)

• Definition(s):
  
  1. (n.) a creative or divine inspiration
  2. (n.) "miraculous communication of a supernatural knowledge; hence also, the imparting of an over-mastering impulse, poetic or otherwise" (OED)

• Front hooks: (none)
• Back hooks:  (none)
• Anagrams: (none)
• Longer extensions:  -ES
• Wraparounds: (none)
• Other Spellings: (none)
• Related Forms: (none)

TileHead says:

Inspiration sometimes seems to come in a blast of air, blowing through quickly and powerfully.  Such is the basis of the word AFFLATUS, which literally means "a blowing or breathing upon," as it derives from the Latin flare, "to blow."  (Indeed, flare and blow are cognates, both probably tracing back to an ancient Indo-European root meaning "to swell, blow up.")  Accordingly, English writers have used AFFLATUS to refer to exceptional puffs of inspiration, or to the divine imparting of supernatural insight or knowledge, since at least the 1600s.

Writings being inspired by... a more gentle and easie afflatus.
– John Spencer, A Discourse Concerning Vulgar Prophecies (1665)

We had been talking about the masters who had achieved but a single masterpiece – the artists and poets who but once in their lives had known the divine afflatus and touched the high level of perfection.
– Henry James, "The Madonna of the Future" (1873)

He never again achieved that delicate balance of cold, scientific investigation and imaginative afflatus.
– Samuel Eugene Scalia, Carducci: His Critics and Translators in England and America (1937)

On the other hand, some bursts of air are more mundane, as with other words derived from flare such as CONFLATE, DEFLATE, INFLATE, REFLATE, SUFFLATE, and INSUFFLATE.  Then there are the usually unwelcome blasts of air associated with FLATUS (n. pl. -ES, "intestinal gas"), FLATULENT (adj., "marked by or affected with gas generated in the intestine or stomach"), and the related forms FLATULENCE, FLATULENCY, and FLATULENTLY.

Moral of the story: the winds of language blow in many directions, and one must take care not to mistake a FLATUS for AFFLATUS.