Greetings, trailblazing travellers, and welcome to today’s installment of An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents. Now it’s time to put on your flying goggles and spread your wings, because today’s word is: nubivagant.

Nubivagant is an adjective meaning ‘moving throughout or among clouds’. For example, you might say, ‘I do hope that nubivagant skydiver is wearing a parachute, he’s a long way from the ground’. The word comes from the Latin ‘nubes’ meaning ‘cloud’ and ‘vagari’ which means ‘to roam’. Thus, we have ‘cloud roamer’, for the word is often associated with wandering or floating through the clouds.

The Latin word, ‘nūbēs’ comes from the Proto-Indo-European word ‘*(s)newdʰ-’ meaning ‘to cover’, and can have all sorts of meanings besides ‘cloud’ including swarm or multitude, phantom or something insubstantial, gloominess, concealment or obscurity, and a figurative storm-cloud or ‘the appearance of a coming danger’. All in one little word! Context really is everything.

Furthermore, the word ‘nimbus’ also derives from the Latin ‘nūbēs’, and means ‘circle or halo of light’, but can also refer to a type of grey rain cloud. In heraldry and art, a nimbus may be considered distinct from a halo, as the term halo can refer to an open ring of light or of gold behind the head of a saint, while nimbus refers to a solid disk of light or gold.You, dear listener, might recognise the word nimbus from it’s appearance in the highly popular Harry Potter books, as Harry often becomes nubivagant riding his Nimbus 2000. I’m sure a few witches and wizards out there know what I’m talking about.

Similar to nubivagant, there is ‘nemorivagant’, which means ‘wandering through forests, groves or woodlands’, and ‘montivagant’ which is ‘wandering through hills and mountains’. Depending on the type of adventures you have, you could be nubivagant, nemorivagant and montivagant all in one day!

Isn’t language wonderful?

Written by Taylor Davidson, Read by Zane C Weber

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