logodaedalus

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English

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Etymology

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This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.
Particularly: “surface analysis logo- + Latin Daedalus (Greek mythological figure who crafted the waxen wings of Icarus and built the labyrinth)

Noun

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logodaedalus (plural logodaedaluses)

  1. A wordsmith; one who uses language with cleverness and skill.
    • 1924, Frank Crane, Edward Jewitt Wheeler, Current Opinion, volume 76:
      Mr. Auslander is a logodaedalus — a wizard of words — whose adjectives possess an unerring salience, whose vigor is as undinted as he bronze of a Thracian shield.
    • 1971, Edward Dahlberg, The Confessions of Edward Dahlberg, page 206:
      What had the ruffian café logodaedalus taught me?
    • 1981, Stephen Spender, Irving Kristol, Encounter, volume 56, page 54:
      There are digressions on literature and the cinema and the tarot pack and crap-shooting and — above all, since Anthony Burgess has ever been a logodaedalus — language.
    • 2015, Peter E. Meltzer, The Thinker's Thesaurus:
      For example, Iain Gale of the Independent wrote of “the logodaedalus's universal sentence, 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,", which uses all the letters of the alphabet.
    • 2018, Alexander Marr, Raphaele Garrod, Jose Ramon Marcaida, Logodaedalus: Word Histories of Ingenuity in Early Modern Europe:
      Yet this enterprise was a slippery one; fictitious etymologies and overclever wordplay were the province of the logodaedalus: a dangerously cunning wordsmith..