40th Annual Saint Ignatius Christmas Concert

Join us on Sunday, December 8th at Severance Music Center for an evening with the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus, a special holiday tradition for our Saint Ignatius community!

Saint Ignatius High School

Etymology Word of the Week

Director of Admissions Pat O'Rourke '90, a self-proclaimed "word nerd," brings you his Etymology Word of the Week. Every other week he presents an online Etymology lesson just for fun!

Etymology Word of the Week – As some of you know, in addition to working in the Admissions Office, I also teach Latin at Saint Ignatius and am something of a "word nerd."  Thus, each week, I’ll sneak a vocabulary word (sometimes derived from Latin, sometimes not) into the e-blast.  Here, then, is this week’s edition of the Etymology Word of the Week.  

Opulent - “richly supplied; abundant or plentiful; wealthy, rich, or affluent.”  From the Latin adjective opulentus meaning “wealthy” which is related to the Latin noun ops, opis meaning “strength, power, assistance, property (and in the plural, wealth)” as well as the Latin noun opus, operis meaning “work, labor, exertion.”  The suffix -ulent means “full of.” (all information is from www.wikipedia.org, www.etymonline.com and/or www.dictionary.com).

RELATED WORDS/PHRASES – fraudulent, turbulent, corpulent, succulent; optimism, optimum, opus, opera

SAMPLE SENTENCE - “William Randolph Hearst’s sprawling San Simeon “ranch” (the model for Citizen Kane’s Xanadu) is an opulent palatial estate - many treasures from all around the world are contained within its confines.”  

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTE:  “I am grateful for what I am and have.  My thanksgiving is perpetual.”  Henry David Thoreau, American poet, essayist, and naturalist