Sunday’s word DELPHIC

[t-bob]

adjective
1. oracular; obscure; ambiguous: She was known for her Delphic pronouncements.

Quotes
The poems of his mature career were often Delphic, haunted, and bleak.
-- Dan Chiasson, "The Final Prophecy of W. S. Merwin," The New Yorker, March 17, 2019

... he would certainly make a few Delphic pronouncements that next to nobody would understand, such as: "You can get many kinds of balance toward any seemingly grinding postulate of life."
-- Newsweek, "About Jack," December 15, 2002


Origin
English Delphic comes via Latin Delphicus from the Greek adjective Delphikós, a derivative of the plural noun Delphoí, the name of the inhabitants of Delphi and of the historic city itself. The many dialect forms of the name, especially Aeolic Bélphoi, point to a form gwelphoi with an original labiovelar (a sound combining a velar, such as k or g, and a bilabial, such as w), as in Latin quis, quid “who, what” and English quick and Gwendolyn. Gwelphoi is a Greek derivative of the Proto-Indo-European root gwelbh- “womb” (the city was so named from its shape). Gwelbh- is also the source of the Greek noun adelpheós (Attic adelphós) “brother,” whose first letter a- is a much-reduced form of sem- “one,” related to Greek homós “same” and English “same.” Adelph(e)ós therefore means “born of the same womb.” Delphic entered English at the end of the 16th century

[epaul]

Good word.

[Russell Letson]

I always fly Delphic--their on-time predictions are always accurate, though not necessarily in ways you might think.

[millring]

oh wow man totally psychedelphic

[Chesapeake]

The Liberty Bell is said to be very Philadephic.