Word For The Day -- WIth A Surprise -- March 22, 2020

This is for the granddaughters for whom I collect words I find in day-to-reading that might show up again in their reading. I have nine pages of vocabulary, playing about ten words on each page, enough for one 4 x 6 index card.

A reader sent me crwth. I have not added it to the granddaughters' list because it is unlikely to show up in their reading ... unless they are studying Welsh. Or perhaps Old English. One wonders if Shakespeare used it. I digress.

The word for the day: Maecenas.

Gaius Clinius Maecenas: friend/political advisor to Octavian / Augustus; important patron for the new generation of Augustan poets, including both Horace and Virgil; Maecenate (patronage); his name has become the eponym for ‘patron of arts”; Virgil introduced Horace to Maecenas; Maecenas has become a byword in many languages for a well-connected and wealthy patron.

At wiki

His name has become a byword in many languages for a well-connected and wealthy patron. For instance, John Dewey, in his lectures Art as Experience, said "Economic patronage by wealthy and powerful individuals has at many times played a part in the encouragement of artistic production. Probably many a savage tribe had its Maecenas."

In Poland and Western Ukraine, a lawyer would customarily be addressed with the honorific "Pan Mecenas", as lawyers were considered to be philanthropists and patrons of the arts.

In The Great Gatsby, along with Midas and J. P. Morgan, Maecenas is one of the three famous wealthy men whose secrets narrator Nick Carraway hopes to find in the books he buys for his home library.

The word "Maecenas", in the sense of cultural benefactor, was the penultimate word used in the 2009 Scripps National Spelling Bee, on May 28, 2009. It was spelled incorrectly.

Okay, I added "crwth" to the page nine. LOL.