Word

Word of the Day for Monday April 26, 2004

lucubration \loo-kyoo-BRAY-shun; loo-kuh-\, noun:
1. The act of studying by candlelight; nocturnal study;
meditation.
2. That which is composed by night; that which is produced by
meditation in retirement; hence (loosely) any literary
composition.

A point of information for those with time on their hands:
if you were to read 135 books a day, every day, for a year,
you wouldn't finish all the books published annually in the
United States. Now add to this figure, which is upward of
50,000, the 100 or so literary magazines; the scholarly,
political and scientific journals (there are 142 devoted to
sociology alone), as well as the glossy magazines, of which
bigger and shinier versions are now spawning, and you'll
appreciate the amount of lucubration that finds its way
into print.
--Arthur Krystal, "On Writing: Let There Be Less," [1]New
York Times, March 26, 1989

One of his characters is given to lucubration. "Things die
on us," he reflects as he lies in bed, "we die on each
other, we die of ourselves."
--"Books of The Times," [2]New York Times, February 7, 1981

Naturally, these fictions ran the risk of tumbling down the
formalist hill and ending up at the bottom without readers
-- except the heroic students of Roland Barthes or Umberto
Eco, professors whose lucubrations were much more
interesting than the books about which they theorized.
--[3]Mario Vargas Llosa, "Thugs Who Know Their Greek,"
[4]New York Times, September 7, 1986


Lucubration comes from Latin lucubratus, past participle of
lucubrare, "to work by night, composed at night (as by
candlelight)," ultimately connected with lux, "light." Hence
it is related to lucent, "shining, bright," and lucid,
"clear." The verb form is lucubrate.