lucubration

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   intensive, prolonged, or laborious study or thought, historically especially work done late at night

   Years of midnight lucubration produced a meticulous history of the city.

2. 2
   noun

   a learned written work produced by intensive study, often one regarded as ponderous or overelaborate

   The reviewer dismissed the pamphlet as a pompous lucubration on a minor dispute.

Borrowed from Latin lucubratio ("study by lamplight"), from lucubrare ("to work by artificial light"), a verb related to lux ("light"). The word broadened from nocturnal study to intensive scholarly work and then to the often weighty writing it produces.

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