It’s Odd Old Words Day here at the sprawling FullofYears campus, and today’s entry is fulminate. (Please curb your vocabulary-loving enthusiasm until you decide whether to become a full-fledged fulminator!)
This Latinate expression—from a root loosely arranged around “hurling lightning”—can add rhetorical flourish to ordinary words that describe expressed anger or condemnation—e.g., denounce, censure, fume. So a fulminator might be an insistently or consistently out-of-control person who hurls anger, name-calling or mockery at others—a verbal bully or garden-variety sociopath.
At base level, fulminators don’t seem inclined toward the usual menu of Christian character traits. This kind of person deserves disregard because his/her intent is to hurt supposed enemies with words. (Who wants to be around someone whose red-faced put-downs rarely stop?) “Righteous anger” doesn’t seem like a good reason for spewing invective, so that’s an equally unattractive justification.
Sometimes I tinker with the thought that counter-fulmination might be in order. Social miscreants abound right now, people who keep saying and doing things that warrant sharp criticism, pushback or repudiation from the rest of us. Absent our negative judgement, those who empty their spleens for almost any reason will just keep soiling our national spirit and ratcheting up widespread vengeance.
The fulminating temptation is there, perhaps only because it could be fun to hurl bitter broadsides and spiteful language at people I think deserve it. (Which would then make me their judge and jury.) That’s not righteous.
I’m fully aware that my own fulminating behaviors could take me into the danger zones of habitual anger, retribution or hate. What’s destroying their brains and souls could do the same to mine. So I don’t want to become a full-time, full-bore fulminator.
On balance, then, I guess I’ll just stick with FullofYears wordsmithing. Especially with odd, old words…..
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