Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Immitigable

Meaning: that which cannot be mitigated, softened, lessened or extenuated.

Usefulness: 2 (It is slightly difficult to enunciate, but if you pull it off much gravitas is achieved: "Such behaviour is immitigable! The chocolate biscuits are sacrosanct, and we must not simply turn a blind eye." I suggest emphatic gestures to accompany the high dudgeon.)

Logofascination: 2

In the wild: Moby Dick. "He was intent on an audacious, immitigable, and supernatural revenge."

Degrees: 3

Connections: immitigable - mitigate - extenuating

Which is used in: G&P, First Book, XXIV: How Gargantua spent his time in rainy weather. Since he could not be as active on a rainy day, Gargantua ate
"more soberly at supper than at other times, and meats more desiccative and extenuating; to the end that the intemperate moisture of the air, communicated to the body by a necessary confinitive, might by this means be corrected, and that they might not receive any prejudice for want of their ordinary bodily exercise." 
Extenuating here is used in one of its earlier senses of 'a diminishing or making less'.


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