Word of the Day: metagrobolize

metagrobolize (v)

To confuse, perplex.

"We simply hung about deck, moping, oppressed, bored and metagrobolized, none breathing a word to the other. Pantagruel lay slumbering on a stool, close to the upper cabin, a copy of Heliodorus in his hand."
--François Rabelais, The Five Books of Gargantua and Pantagruel:
in the modern translation of Jacques Le Clercq

I'm confused. Is "Heliodorus" a book or a person, François? Probably a human. According to Wikipedia (source of all wisdom), there were umpteen ancient Greeks and Romans with this name. Only one of them, I've just discovered, has a fan page on Facebook, however: Heliodorus of Emesa, whom 10 people in the Book of Faces "like". (Not me; I don't warm up to people quickly, especially if they've been dead for two millennia.)

Heliodorus reputedly wrote a novel called Aethiopica. Now, as an auspicious English major, I was taught that "the novel", as we know it anyway, was invented in the 18th century, not in ancient Greece, so this so-called novel was probably more like an epic poem, a la the Iliad or the Odyssey, except it's described as a "romance", the story of "Theagenes and Chariclea". I'm guessing they were like Romeo and Juliet in togas. Or something. I don't know. The only reason I know about Aethiopica at all is that it also has a fan page on Facebook, well-liked (more than four times more liked than the author himself) by a throng of 44 Facebookies. I'm tempted to "like" it even though I've never heard of it before, let alone read it. "Michael likes Aethiopica" would indubitably get my 161 friends guessing.