Entry: ziggurats (n.)
In context: "...you can make coffee in 60-cup urns and stack polystyrene cups in big ziggurats and sell raffle tickets and make sandwiches..."
Definition: A staged tower of pyramid form in which each successive storey is smaller than that below it, so as to leave a terrace all round; an Assyrian or Babylonian temple-tower.
Other: Also 'zikkurats'. Interesting etymology - the first I've noticed with an Assyrian root:
Etymology: < Assyrian ziqquratu (also zigg-, sig(g)-, -ur(r)at) height, pinnacle, top of a mountain, temple-tower; compare zaqaru to be high (Muss-Arnolt).
SNOOT score: 1
Page: 343
Source: Oxford English Dictionary
Definitive Jest is a vocabulary-building and SNOOT-approved word-of-the-day blog centered around David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.
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