{"id":1262,"date":"2020-06-26T14:51:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-26T18:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=1262"},"modified":"2020-06-26T14:51:00","modified_gmt":"2020-06-26T18:51:00","slug":"word-of-the-week-abjure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/writing\/2020\/06\/26\/word-of-the-week-abjure\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week! Abjure"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>Linda Hobgood, Director of UR’s Speech Center, ran across this term recently and nominated it. And why am I using a scene from Peter Jackson’s film? Wait for it.<\/p>\n

It has a legal sound, to my untrained ear. But that is merely one definition given by the OED<\/a>. In fact, the term generally means to renounce. In the obsolete legal sense, it meant to leave a place, rather akin to renouncing one’s citizenship in the era before passports.\u00a0Most all senses of the word are historical or obsolete, yet the word has a formal sensibility that merits its continuance.<\/p>\n

One usage does remain current, for breaking an oath. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s history of Middle Earth, I first learned the term “oathbreaker,” back when I was a teen. These poor fellows vowed to defend a kingdom against evil, and yet abjured their vows. They were cursed to become the living dead, until another king would call upon them to fulfill their oaths.<\/p>\n

That’s rough justice. As for our word?<\/p>\n

Let’s abjure abjuring abjure, and bring it back into our formal use.<\/p>\n

Image of Aragorn calling upon the Oathbreakers of Middle Earth, courtesy of The Lord of the Ring Wiki<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Linda Hobgood, Director of UR’s Speech Center, ran across this term recently and nominated it. And why am I using a scene from Peter Jackson’s film? Wait for it. It has a legal sound, to my untrained ear. But that is merely one definition given by the OED. In fact, the term generally means to … Continue reading Word of the Week! Abjure<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6904,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2516,87402,87406,40197],"tags":[2522],"class_list":["post-1262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-writing","category-legal-writing","category-loan-word","category-vocabulary","tag-word-of-the-week"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6904"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}