Tuesday, August 05, 2008

princox

word of the day: princox

context: “Banal Sojourn”, a poem by Wallace Stevens, appearing in Prize Poems, 1913-1929, an anthology edited by Charles A. Warner.

“… who can care at the wigs despoiling the Satan ear?
And who does not seek the sky unfuzzed, soaring to the princox?”

definition: a self-confident young fellow
from dictionary.com

This would be one of the reasons I don’t rush to a dictionary when coming upon unfamiliar words in poems such as Stevens’. What does it add to know that a “princox” is a “self-confident young fellow”? Not much. In fact, it’s rather a disappointment.

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