It was working fine – fulgently, even. And then, suddenly, after the update, it was not. It was case of fulminant software dysfunction. At random times, it would suddenly slow down dramatically and use up so much memory my laptop’s fan was threatening a tornado. A program I would normally keep a half dozen files open in, and not need to restart for weeks at a time, I suddenly, tout à coup, needed to restart three times a day. Nor were the bits of advice online especially illuminating – no, I’m not going to simply rip out the entire software suite and reinstall, thereby losing all my settings, and [stricken from the text] you for suggesting it.
Needless to say, I was fuming. In fact, I was fulminating. I expounded effusive verbal effluvium, of the fulsomely vulgar kind. I don’t expect software to be inevitably fulgent, let alone fulgurant, but I do want it to be configured meaningfully. And if it’s not being useful, well, I will be Zeusful: hurling verbal lightning bolts at it.
I don’t know just how enlightening that all is, but in the end, it’s the lightning. You see, Latin for ‘lightning’ is fulmen, which is formed from fulgeo ‘I flash, I glare, I am lightning’. And from fulmen and fulgeo we get fulgent ‘shining like lightning’, fulgurant ‘dazzling like lightning’, fulminant ‘appearing abruptly and striking destructively like lightning’ (most commonly used in medical contexts), and fulminate ‘make a verbal attack; hurl verbal lightning bolts; espouse the striking of lightning on the subject’ – fulminate first appeared in English in the 1400s in legal and ecclesiastic contexts, referring to denunciations, formal censures, and similar blasts from on high, but now it’s extended to any kind of verbal inflammation.
These four words are similar and yet not the same – they cover a range of aspects of lightning, positive (the emission of photons and their illuminating effects) and negative (the electrical charge and its destructive power). The point, if you figure it out, is to have the full meaning with all its implications: a shock to the system may be enlightening, but not all abrupt enlightenment is jovial in nature. Yes, Jove – Jupiter – Zeus – is the god of sparkling jollity, but he is also the god who hurls thunderbolts, and they can land in different ways, including the abrupt arrival of a curse, as in misfortune, or the abrupt emission of curses, as in imprecations.
And it can come in multiple scales and modes: macro or micro, hard or soft, deed or word. Now I can hardly wait for the next electric download of an update to restore my software to fulgent functionality.
Sesquiotica 