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HECTOR (v. -ED, -ING, -S)
Definition(s):
- (v.) to bully or brag
- (v.) to intimidate or domineer
- (n.) a bully or braggart
Useful information for game players:
- Front hooks: (none)
- Back hooks: -S
- Anagrams: ROCHET, ROTCHE, TOCHER, TROCHE
- Longer extensions: hectorED, hectorING, hectorINGLY
- Wraparounds: (none)
- Other Spellings: (none)
- Related Forms: HECTORINGLY (adv.)
Epilogue:
This word is a bit unfair, for in Homer’s Iliad (c. 800 BC) Hector was a valiant warrior who is eventually killed by Achilles during the Trojan War. He is neither particularly bullying nor boastful, and originally the noun HECTOR referred to a leader or warrior. Nonetheless, from the 1600s on the word has been used almost exclusively in pejorative senses, perhaps influenced by the line “Said I well, bully Hector?” in Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor (1602). “Bully” at the time was sometimes used as a general term of endearment roughly meaning “good fellow,” but perhaps that fact was lost on later generations.
A lot of words about bragging and braggarts derive from characters in drama and literature. Here are a few more interesting ones in that category:
- BRAGGADOCIO (n.): an empty braggart
(first used by Edmund Spenser as a personification of vainglory in the _Faerie Queene_)
- RODOMONTADE (n.): a braggart, or a vainglorious act or piece of writing
(from an Italian word, popularized by the name of a character in Italian Renaissance epic poems)
- SCARAMOUCH or SCARAMOUCHE (n.): a stock character in Italian *commedia dell’arte* and pantomime that is usually characterized by boastfulness or cowardliness
(from an Italian word roughly meaning “skirmish”)
- THRASONICAL (adj.): boastful, vainglorious
(from Thraso, the name of a braggart in the ancient Roman comedy _Eunuchus_)
This week’s theme:
Words about bragging, vanity, and boastfulness
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