#WordOfTheDay for Thursday, July 18, 2013 poetaster POH-it-as-ter, noun: an inferior poet; a writer of indifferent verse. Someone who writes verses but does not produce this essence is called a "poetaster." A poetaster is a fraudulent poet, a non-poet. -- Frederick Busch, Letters to a Fiction Writer, 2000 Rotten as a poetaster or a second-rate musician reduced to beggary. -- Carmen Boullosa, Cleopatra Dismounts, 2003 Poetaster entered English in the late 1500s. It is a combination of the word poet and the rarely used Latin suffix -aster which denotes something that imperfectly resembles or mimics the true thing.
Posted on: Thu, 18 Jul 2013 12:41:48 +0000
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