saturnist means A person of a dull, grave, gloomy temperament. It carries an Arena rating of 1531, earned across 33 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, saturnist ranks #1,127 of 17,104 for Most Storied Words, #2,550 of 17,151 for The Improbable, #3,083 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #3,812 of 17,163 for Funniest Words.
Why “saturnist” is a great word
SATURNIST — [Noun] A person of a dull, grave, or gloomy temperament. From the name of the Roman god Saturn (associated with melancholy and slowness) + the English suffix -ist (denoting an adherent or person characterized by something). Unlike a melancholic, which suggests a pensive, often poetic sadness, or a stoic, which denotes calm endurance, a saturnist is marked by an inherent, leaden, and sullen gloom. It is the countenance of a man watching rain streak a grimy windowpane for the third consecutive day, the deliberate, plodding gait of someone carrying an unseen burden, the oppressive silence that settles in a room long after the guests have departed—a gravity of spirit so profound it feels less like an emotion and more like a geological fact.
Etymology
From Saturn + -ist.
noun
- A person of a dull, grave, gloomy temperament.e.g.“Seating himselfe within a darkesome cave, / (Such places heavy Saturnists doe crave,) / Where yet the gladsome day was never seene […]” — 1613, William Browne, Britannia's Pastorals:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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