Entry: avuncular (adj.)
In context: "The tennis coach took Orin's decision hard, and Orin had had to hand him a Kleenex and stand there for several minutes under the poster of an avuncular Big Bill Tilden standing there in WWII-era long white pants and ruffling a ballboy's hair, Orin watching the Kleenex soggify and get holes blown through it while he tried to articulate just what he had meant by burned out and withered husk and carrot."
Definition: Of, belonging to, or resembling, an uncle.
Though also oddly:
b. (humorously) Of a pawnbroker: see uncle n. Also absol.
Other:
SNOOT score: 1
Page:290
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.
I think DFW means it in the other, related sense: "Kind and friendly toward a younger or less experienced person."
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