Word - 34

CICERONE \sih-suh-ROH-nee\ noun

1 : a guide who conducts sightseers
*2 : mentor, tutor

Example sentence:
After I bought my first set of golf clubs, Jerry acted as my cicerone, enthusiastically teaching me the basics of the challenging sport.

Did you know?

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 - 43 B.C.) was renowned in Rome as a statesman, lawyer, and writer, and he is remembered today for his skills as an orator and rhetorician. The Ciceronian style of rhetoric placed special emphasis on the rhythms and cadences of phrases and sentences and their ability to appeal to the speaker's audience. It is believed that Cicero's eloquence and learning influenced the use of his Italian name, "Cicerone," to refer to sightseeing guides, themselves known for their talkativeness and eloquence, and later, to persons who serve as mentors or tutors to others.

Word - 33

DIVAGATE \DYE-vuh-gayt\ verb

: to wander or stray from a course or subject
: diverge, digress

Example sentence:
The novel divagates and meanders through a labyrinth of subplots and asides.

Did you know?

"Divagate" hasn't wandered far in meaning from its Latin ancestors. It descends from the verb "divagari," which comes from "dis-," meaning "apart," and "vagari," meaning "to wander." "Vagari" also gave us "vagabond," meaning "a wanderer with no home," and "extravagant," an early, now archaic, sense of which was "wandering away." Latin "vagari" is also probably the source of our noun "vagary," which now usually means "whim or caprice" but originally meant "journey, excursion, or tour." Even the verb "stray" may have evolved from "vagari," by way of Vulgar Latin and Middle French. Today, "divagate" can suggest a wandering or straying that is literal (as in "the hikers divagated from the trail"), but it is more often used figuratively (as in "she tends to divagate from the subject").