Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar — another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word:
QUIXOTIC
We owe this eponymous adjective to Cervantes, whose 17th-century satirical novel about Don Quixote's naive attempts to live out the values and behaviors of chivalry in our post-chivalric world gave a name to apply to all we consider idealistic, impractical and unrealistic.
Though the character's name is pronounced, as in Spanish, as "kee-HO-tee," the English adjective is pronounced as "kwix-OT-ick." The English, as George Orwell pointed out, thought it effeminate to pronounce a foreign word correctly.
Example
: Since Sept. 27, 2010,