Make Your Point > Archived Issues > NIMBUS
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If your young wizard needs a flying broomstick and you give him a Nimbus Two Thousand, like J. K. Rowling did, you're implying that the broom is glorious. That it's so good that it's practically holy.
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"Nimbus" comes straight from Latin, where it meant "a cloud," or, problematically, both "a raincloud" and "a bright cloud."
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Part of speech:
Pick the formal, lofty, literary, semi-common word "nimbus" to add a sense of glory or holiness to the cloudlike thing you're describing.
"He waited, and in a moment she was at the kitchen window with a nimbus of light around her head."
Explain the meaning of "nimbus" without saying "aura" or "halo of light."
Fill in the blanks: "(Something) floated around (someone or something) like a nimbus."
Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.
1.
The opposite of NIMBUSED, the adjective, could be
I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love. I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words. |