ÒÁÈ˾þÃ

FOR THIS year’s Feedback competition, readers were invited to invent a new scientific word that we need and define it in an appropriately pompous way. The competition attracted more entries than any previous one, and the standard was impressively high. The first shortlist of potential winners contained more than 50 entries, and whittling it down to just 10 was quite a challenge. We were interested, too, to note that in a competition about word definitions, readers embraced such a variety of definitions of the word “pompous” – including, in some cases, the short and the pithy. But who are we to argue? The word’s the thing…