The word jeremiad has appeared in five articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Aug. 30 in the Opinion column “Why We Don’t Build Beautifully” by Ross Douthat:
Standing in the Roman Pantheon last spring, one of my daughters asked the kind of question that newspaper columnists are tempted to place in the mouths of our children when we’re hard up for a column hook: “Dad, why don’t people build things this beautiful anymore?
One of my fitfully followed parental rules is that when a kid asks about something that touches on the deep issues of our time, I don’t immediately launch into a jeremiad. Instead, my children are served a combination of here’s what your dad thinks and here’s what other people think, with a thumb on the scale for the paternal point of view but also a pedantic attempt to make sure they understand the whole debate. (Often they wander off before I’m done, for some reason.)
Daily Word Challenge
Can you correctly use the word jeremiad in a sentence?
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