Entry: effluvia (n.)
In context: "...the toxic effluvia choking our highways and littering our byways and grungeing up our sunsets and cruddying those harbors..."
Definition: †1. A flowing out, an issuing forth; a process or manner of issuing forth. Obs.
2. Chiefly applied to the (real or supposed) outflow of material particles too subtle to be perceived by touch or sight; concr. a stream of such outflowing particles.
b. A stream of minute particles, formerly supposed to be emitted by a magnet, electrified body, or other attracting or repelling agent, and to be the means by which it produces its effects. Chiefly pl. (Now hist.; but it probably survived the theory which it strictly implies.) Also fig.
Other:
SNOOT score: 1
Page: 383
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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