brutum fulmen
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
21
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
4
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "... it was a question only whether the one hundred and eighty inconsistent canons thus added to the Corpus Juris of the Church would remain a mere brutum fulmen, or whether they would be the source of endless litigation and schism."
- "Generally speaking the making of an order which will be a brutum fulmen serves no good purpose of justice."
- "The later order of May 8, 1984, purporting also to declare the same declaration of trust void and revoked, accomplished nothing. It was a brutum fulmen."
- "All These would have been Blasts of Wind, bruta Fulmina, no more, if the King had yielded ..."
- "'But nobody heeds you, my worthy; it's mere waste of powder—shooting at emptiness, brutum fulmen—mere play-house thunder ...'"
- "... he owed his success to the threat to march on the capital, which would have been a brutum fulmen had it been capable of withstanding a siege."
Etymology
From Latin brutum (“stupid”) + fulmen (“lightning”), derived from a 1680 pamphlet by Thomas Barlow of that title, originally from a passage of Pliny's Natural History: "hinc bruta fulmina et vana" ("these senseless and ineffectual thunder-claps", intended as a literal description of lightning).
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
- Root: brutum
Usage
Inflected Forms
bruta fulmina (plural)
fulmen brutum (alternative)