circumforaneous
English edit
Etymology edit
Latin circumforāneus (“itinerant”), from circum- (“around”) + forum (“marketplace”) + -aneus (“-aneous”).
Pronunciation edit
Adjective edit
circumforaneous (comparative more circumforaneous, superlative most circumforaneous)
- Wandering from place to place or market to market.
- 1992, Peter Bowler, Ron Bell, The superior person's second book of weird and wondrous words, page 38:
- Gyrovagues: Monks who were accustomed to wander from place to place. In modern times, perhaps, any of the various circumforaneous proselytizers who go from door to door—Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, et al.
- 2008, James Boice, NoVA: a novel, page 83:
- It is perfect for a thirteen-year-old child of NoVA when in the throes of another fit of aimlessness and maddening, ravenous boredom in which only the entering of a mall, the circumforaneous wandering amid others of your kind, or the buying of a CD (usually more like the stealing of a CD) can cure the disease.
- (by extension) Indirect, roundabout, or unnecessarily complex.
- 2002, Philip Mirowski, Machine dreams: economics becomes a cyborg science, page 43:
- The reason that this has not been the subject of extended commentary in science studies was that the path along which thermodynamics wrought its magic was unprecedentedly indirect and circumforaneous: […]
Related terms edit
Translations edit
indirect, unnecessarily complex
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