Meet the Flambore

Photo: Demi Brooke

A few months ago, we coined a new word on this blog: “penultamour,” defined as “the last person to date another person before that other person took up with his/her eventual spouse.”
The word hasn’t exactly caught fire; but at least someone grabbed the domain name www.penultamour.com.
Now a reader named Anne Tadman Cramb writes in with a neologism of her own:

May I introduce the “flambore” [noun] — i.e., one who is flamborant, i.e., someone with a “big personality” who, in company, performs stories, and is seemingly unable to engage in reciprocal conversation with others. Flamborancy becomes more apparent on subsequent occasions, as the flambore tends to forget which stories he has told to whom!
Flambores often make the mistake of thinking others have nothing worthwhile to say and appear frightened of short pauses in conversation, so they readily go into their schtick.
Happy New Year, and may you not have the misfortune of being on the receiving end of a flambore during 2009!

I don’t know if Anne will have any more luck with “flambore” than I did with “penultamour,” but if it’s any consolation, she should at least consider that the typical flambore probably has a somewhat better-than-average chance of becoming a penultamour.