“It is the duty of every citizen according to his
best capacities to give validity to his
convictions in political affairs.”

- Albert Einstein

To objurgate is to denounce harshly, to upbraid vigorously, to berate sharply, to reproach in no uncertain terms, to give 'em hell. Objurgate is from Latin objurgatus, past participle of objurgare (to scold, chide, reprove), based on prefix ob- (against) plus jurgare (to rebuke), based in turn on jur-, stem of jus (law, right) plus agere (to drive). Objurgation (ob jur GAY shun) is the noun, and a geat deal of it is heard at the United Nations (which is given as an example of oxymoron in another part of this book).

Meliorism is the belief that everything tends to get better and better. One who lives by this doctrine is a meliorist (MEEL yuh rist, MEE lee uh-). These words are derived from Latin melior (better), the comparitive of bonus (good). The superlative is optimus (best), which gave us optimism and optimist. It may be hard to find much difference between the attitudes of meliorists and optimists, but the English novelist George Eliot (1819-1880) did find a shade of difference: The English poet A.E. Housman (1859-1936) wrote, in an autobiographical note: "I am not a pessimist but a pejorist (as George Eliot said she was not an optimist but a meliorist)..." In Latin, pejor means "worse" and pessimus means "worst." A pejorist (whose doctrine is known as pejorism) believes that everything is getting worse; a pessimist thinks that it's all going to be as bad as possible: superlatively bad, shall we say, in this atomic age? In any event, George Eliot thought that the world was going to get better - but not as good as possible; and that is the fine difference between meliorism and optimism. Other words from melior are ameliorate (uh MEEL yuh rate, -ee uh-), to improve; amelioration (uh meel yuh RAY shun), improvement generally, but with a special use in linguistics: semantic change to a better, i.e., more favorable meaning, the way Okie, once a pejorative term for a migrant farm worker, usually from Oklahoma, became merely a colloquial nickname for any Oklahoman, and exactly opposite to the way egregious (from Latin egregius, extraordinary, preeminent, based on prefix e-, out of, plus grege, a form of grex, herd, i.e., out of the herd) changed from preeminent to glaring, flagrant, notorious, as in an egregious blunder. But caution: meliority (meel YOR ih tee, mee lee OR-) hs nothing to do with attitudes about which way the world is moving; it is only an uncommon synonym for superiority.