encomium
noun
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Kudos to encomium for being a marvelous, magnificent, must-have word for high praise for over four centuries—at least in formal speech and writing. Indeed, like its synonym panegyric, encomium (from the Greek word enkōmion, meaning “celebration”) has seen a steady drop in usage since the early 1800s and is rarely encountered outside of literary or highfalutin contexts. It does pop up in pop culture now and again, however. Music fans of a certain generation may remember a host of their favorite artists, from Tori Amos to Stone Temple Pilots, paying tribute to Led Zeppelin in 1995 on the appropriately titled album Encomium: A Tribute to Led Zeppelin. And more recently, the famously loquacious television series Gilmore Girls dropped encomium no less than five times in a 2016 episode featuring “Stars Hollow: The Musical,” a show-within-a-show featuring the line “Not so fast with the encomiums!” Of course, you may dish out your own encomiums in any manner or velocity you wish—and verily we shall tip our chapeaux.
Examples of encomium in a Sentence
Daniel Kolitz, Harpers Magazine, 24 Oct. 2025
What Zagajewski had in mind, perhaps, is the encomium, praise as a classical enterprise—the verb alone intimates the mode of speech at the heart of the ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy itself, tracing back to Plato and before.
—Elaine L. Wang
september 11, Literary Hub, 11 Sep. 2025
An encomium for the adversary: Plastics are amazing.
—Annie Lowrey, The Atlantic, 7 July 2025
The mall is an elegy for what mid-20th-century politicians and progressives imagined downtown Los Angeles could be: a city with a vibrant core, accessible by freeways, anchored by a City Hall with encomiums inscribed above entrances exalting the public good.
—Thomas Curwen, Los Angeles Times, 22 Nov. 2024
See All Example Sentences for encomium
Cite this Entry
“Encomium.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/encomium. Accessed 3 Nov. 2025.
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encomium
noun
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