caducity

Mr. Simon could be dense and even obscure, gilding his essays with discussions of Baudelaire, Nietzsche and Serbian poetry, and with terms such as “tonitruous,” “caducity” and “parataxis.”

Let us deduct even from old age the years of infancy, the years of caducity, and the years of sleep,—alas! what remaineth of our many and our energetic days?

In a miracle-play, the whole life of a saint, from the cradle to martyrdom, was displayed in the same piece; the youth, the middle-age, and the caducity of the eminent personage required to be enacted by three different actors, so that there were the first, the second, and the third Jacob, to emulate one another, and provoke bickerings; townsfolk when acting, it appears, being querulously jealous.

Perhaps the numerous political and social revolutions, the frequent successions of peoples, rulers and subjects in turn, had accustomed the mind to conceive and anticipate perpetual changes, of which the successive ages of the world were but the supreme expression; and finally, perhaps that quasi-messianic expectation of the return of Quetzalcoatl, to be accompanied by a complete renewal of things, may have given an additional point of attachment to this belief in the caducity of the whole existing order.

Apodeictic, muliebrity, mansuetude, even caducity, caliginosity, nitid, agrestic, roborant or vilipend have Latin or Greek roots that are very familiar to me and most high school graduates.