Wondrous Words Wednesday

Kathy over at Bermudaonion's Weblog hosts Wondrous Words Wednesday. If you come across a word (or two) while reading that is new to you and would like to share your new knowledge, then hop over to Kathy's place and link up!

Here's what I've got this week from The Insidious Dr Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer:

Dacoit: Bandit--According to OED "A member of a class of robbers in India and Burma, who plunder in armed bands." And dacoity: bandrity, robbing in groups.

Quiescent: quiet or inactive

Zayat Kiss: mysterious weapon used by Fu-Manchu's men which leaves a mark like a kiss on the victim [found later to be caused by the bite of a poisonous centipede-like creature]

Context (p. 16):

It was the cry of a dacoit. Oh, dacoity, though quiescent, is by no means extinct. Fu-Manchu has dacoits in his train, and probably it is one who operates the Zayat Kiss, since it was a dacoit who watched the window of the study this evening.

Brassey (brassie): a club with a wooden head, the brass-plated face of which has more slope than a driver but less than a spoon, for hitting long, low drives on the fairway.

Context (p. 17):

The perfumed envelope lay upon a little coffee table in the center of the floor, and Smith, with an electric pocket lamp, a revolver, and a brassey beside him, sat on cushions in the shadow of a wardrobe. 

Wondrous Words Wednesday

Kathy over at Bermudaonion's Weblog hosts Wondrous Words Wednesday. If you come across a word (or two) while reading that is new to you and would like to share your new knowledge, then hop over to Kathy's place and link up!

Here's what I've got this week from New Graves at Great Norne by Henry Wade (p. 220):

He found the room larger than he expected, but from the look of the furniture he guessed it was the only one in the house.  There was a bed, a deal table, a mangle, a dresser, a sink, and a small range with an open fire.

Deal table:  made of pine or fir wood/planks  (Etymology: Middle English dele, from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German, plank; akin to Old High German dili plank -- more at THILL)
1 a British : a board of fir or pine b : sawed yellow-pine lumber nine inches (22.5 centimeters) or wider and three, four, or five inches (7.6 to 12.4 centimeters) thick
2 : pine or fir wood (Merriam Webster Dictionary)

Mangle: A mangle (as it is called in the United Kingdom) or wringer (as it is called in the United States) is a mechanical laundry aid consisting of two rollers in a sturdy frame, connected by cogs and, in its home version, powered by a hand crank or electrically. While the appliance was originally used to wring water from wet laundry, today mangles are used to press or flatten sheets, tablecloths, kitchen towels, or clothing and other laundry. [from Wikipedia]

A Norahammars Bruk model 3005-2 mangle from 1934

Wondrous Words Wednesday

Kathy over at Bermudaonion's Weblog hosts Wondrous Words Wednesday. If you come across a word (or two) while reading that is new to you and would like to share your new knowledge, then hop over to Kathy's place and link up!

Here's what I've got this week from That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis:

Seccotined: glued; from a brand of refined liquid fish glue used for gluing paper and card and as a binder in gesso, which remains flexible after drying. It is also used in the mounting of preserved insect specimens, as it can be dissolved in water if the specimen must be removed for further investigation.

Context:

"There was an odious little man in a peaked cap who talked to Cecil with a cigarette in his mouth, at least it wasn't in his mouth but seccotined onto his upper lip--"

Wondrous Words Wednesday

Kathy over at Bermudaonion's Weblog hosts Wondrous Words Wednesday. If you come across a word (or two) while reading that is new to you and would like to share your new knowledge, then hop over to Kathy's place and link up!

Here's what I've got this week from The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells:

Spankers: Usually gaff-headed sails set from the aftermost lower mast of a sailing ship.

Context (p. 18): The patched and dirty spankers were tense before the wind, and up aloft the little ship seemed carrying every sail she had.

Taffrail: the aftermost railing around the stern of a ship, often, but not always, ornately carved.

Context (p. 18): We went past the steersman to the taffrail and stared side by side for a space at the water foaming and the bubbles dancing and vanishing in her wake.

Wondrous Words Wednesday

Kathy over at Bermudaonion's Weblog hosts Wondrous Words Wednesday. If you come across a word (or two) while reading that is new to you and would like to share your new knowledge, then hop over to Kathy's place and link up!

Here's what I've got this week from Hide & Seek by Wilkie Collins (p.15):

Latitudinarianism: Holding or expressing broad or tolerant views, especially in religious matters.

Originally Latitudinarian: A member of a group of Anglican Christians active from the 17th through the 19th century who were opposed to dogmatic positions of the Church of England and allowed reason to inform theological interpretation and judgment.

Context: The grandfather in the story is lecturing his son-in-law about how he (son-in-law) is treating the grandson who is six years old. The grandfather thinks that the son-in-law is expecting too much from his son--that he sit absolutely still through two hours of a church service and particularly a long and boring sermon.

"Do you mean to tell me that he, or any other child at his time of life, could understand anything of such a subject as that; or get an atom of good out of it? You can't--you know you can't! I say it again, it's no use taking him to church yet; and what's more, it's worse than no use, for you only associate his first ideas of religious instruction with everything in the way of restraint and discipline and punishment that can be most irksome to him."

"Latitudinarianism," said Mr. Thorpe [the son-in-law], looking and speaking straight at the the portrait of the Reverend Aaron Yollop.

Wondrous Words Wednesday

Kathy over at Bermudaonion's Weblog hosts Wondrous Words Wednesday. If you come across a word (or two) while reading that is new to you and would like to share your new knowledge, then hop over to Kathy's place and link up!

Here's what I've got this week from Perelandra by C. S. Lewis:

Reentrants: reentering angles

It was an irregularly shaped object with many curves and reentrants. (p. 37) [Angles and curves together...now that is irregularly shaped.]


Gamboge:
1. A strong yellow color.
2. A gum resin obtained from the sap of trees of the genus Garcinia, used as a yellow pigment and as a cathartic.

It was variegated in colours like a patch-work quilt--flame-colour, ultramarine, crimson, orange, gamboge, and violet. (p. 37)

Friable: easily crumbled or pulverized

Burrowing idly with his fingers he found something friable like dry soil, but very little of it, for almost at once he came upon a base of tough, interlocked fibres. (p. 40)

Wondrous Words Wednesday

Kathy over at Bermudaonion's Weblog hosts Wondrous Words Wednesday. If you come across a word (or two) while reading that is new to you and would like to share your new knowledge, then hop over to Kathy's place and link up!

Here's what I've got this week from The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey:

Steupsed: Native to the islands of Trinidad and Tobago in the West Indies. Imitative of the act of sucking one's teeth - "kissing teeth" - as a gesture of annoyance or disapproval. Or The act of showing disappointment, derision or disgust for a person, place or thing.

Context (p. 8):

"You never taste it?" [reference to eating stewed iguana]
"Of course not, eh, eh," Sabine steupsed, sucking her teeth.


Keskidee: A small bird with a bright yellow underbelly. The wings and back are black with small white markings

Context (pp. 10-11)

Tea. At 4 pm every day on the porch out back. Tea and cake and the keskidees swooping to drink from the swimming pool.

Wondrous Words Wednesday

Kathy over at Bermudaonion's Weblog hosts Wondrous Words Wednesday. If you come across a word (or two) while reading that is new to you and would like to share your new knowledge, then hop over to Kathy's place and link up!

Here's what I've got this week from Vane Pursuit by Charlotte MacLeod:

1. Verdegrised: Coated with a deposit--usually greenish or bluish in color.

Context: The hand-wrought copper silhouette, verdigrised with time and soap fumes, depicted a lanky man sitting in a round washtub. (p. 1)

2. Beeves: old English plural of the word “beef” (may refer to cows, bulls, oxen, etc) Saponifications: processes that produce soap, usually from fats and lye

Context: Both had been here since the late 1860s, the cannon's muzzle pointing straight towards the factory's tallow room within whose vats thousands upon thousands of beeves had over the years rendered up their fat to be converted by the alchemy of potash and perfume into Lumpkin's Lilywhite for lovely young ladies, Lumpkin's Latherite for dirty old men, Lumpkin's Launderite for the washing you love to hang, and no doubt a good many more subtle saponifications of which Helen knew nothing. (p. 3)

3. Oleagonious: Rich in, covered with, or producing oil; oily or greasy OR Exaggeratedly and distastefully complimentary; obsequious.

Context: He played the bass viol, or thought he did, and pontificated a good deal about music using the right words in all the wrong places. Oleaginous creature. (p. 72)

4. Tenebrous: Dark; shadowy or obscure; shady; murky

Context: "It did seem awfully tenebrous trying to pin a rap on a woman I've never met just because she happens to use an unusual name." [Helen Shandy]
"And even more tenebrous to pounce on the woman's husband just because he happens to have part of his barn left." [Peter Shandy]

5. Titivating: To make decorative additions to; spruce up.

Context: What I'd suggest, Miss Binks, is that you put on your--er--shore-going clothes and let Swope and me drive you. We could stop at my house near the college long enough for you to do any--er--titivating you may feel inclined to. (pp 203-4)

Wondrous Words Wednesday

Kathy over at Bermudaonion's Weblog hosts Wondrous Words Wednesday. If you come across a word (or two) while reading that is new to you and would like to share your new knowledge, then hop over to Kathy's place and link up!

Here's what I've got this week from The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell:

Zoetrope: is a device that produces an illusion of action from a rapid succession of static pictures. The term zoetrope is from the Greek words "zoe", "life" and τρόπος - tropos, "turn". It may be taken to mean "wheel of life". (Wikipedia)

Context: She speaks to no one, these days. She wants to concentrate, she doesn't like to muddy things with the distraction of speech. There is a zoetrope inside her head and she doesn't like to be caught out when it stops.

Wondrous Words Wednesday

Kathy over at Bermudaonion's Weblog hosts Wondrous Words Wednesday. If you come across a word (or two) while reading that is new to you and would like to share your new knowledge, then hop over to Kathy's place and link up!

Here's what I've got this week from Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L Sayers:

Supererogation: the act of performing more than is required by duty, obligation, or need (p, 193)

Context: After a brief statement that he intended, not merely to prove his noble client's innocence but (as a work of supererogation) to make clear every detail of the tragedy, Sir Impey Biggs proceeded without further delay to call his witnesses.


Corbel: is a piece of stone jutting out of a wall to carry a weight (definition & image from Wikipedia); sometimes with the images of angels or gargoyles or the like.



Context: [Mr. Murbles] leaned back in his seat smirking like a very neat little grotesque from a Gothic corbel. (p. 195)

Wondrous Words Wednesday

Kathy over at Bermudaonion's Weblog hosts Wondrous Words Wednesday. If you come across a word (or two) while reading that is new to you and would like to share your new knowledge, then hop over to Kathy's place and link up!

Here's what I've got this week from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne:

Crasis: (archaic) Composition; constitution; blending; makeup

Context:

This is all that ever staggered my faith in regard to Yorick's extraction, who by what I can remember of him, and by all accounts I could ever get of him, seemed not to have had a single drop of Danish blood in his whole crasis....

Mercurial: characterized by rapid and unpredictable changeableness of mood
Heteroclite: a person or thing that deviates from the ordinary rule or form
Declensions: everything I can find on this seems to refer to the "inflection of words that serves to indicate number and gender"; I'm not sure how that applies hereGaieté de Cœur: Light-heartedness

--he was on the contrary, as mercurial and sublimated a composition,--as heteroclite a creature in all his declensions,--with as much life and whim and gaieté de cœur about him, as the kindliest climate could have engendered and put together.

Wondrous Words Wednesday

Kathy over at Bermudaonion's Weblog hosts Wondrous Words Wednesday. If you come across a word (or two) while reading that is new to you and would like to share your new knowledge, then hop over to Kathy's place and link up!

Here's what I've got this week from Dancers in Mourning by Margery Allingham:

Bandarloggy: "monkey people" from a term used in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book to describe monkeys.

Context (p. 72):
"We've landed ourselves among a funny crowd, my boy, haven't we? A damned curious bandarloggy lot. Nothin' like Cambridge."

Campion relinquished his own thoughts regretfully. "Bandarloggy?"

"Indian," explained Uncle William. "Means the 'monkey people.' Got it out of the Jungle Books."

Wondrous Words Wednesday

Kathy over at Bermudaonion's Weblog hosts Wondrous Words Wednesday. If you come across a word (or two) while reading that is new to you and would like to share your new knowledge, then hop over to Kathy's place and link up!

Here's what I've got this week from The Wyndham Case by Jill Paton Walsh (p. 34):

Adumbrating (form of adumbrate):

1. To give a sketchy outline of.

2. To prefigure indistinctly; foreshadow.

3. To disclose partially or guardedly.

4. To overshadow; shadow or obscure.
[from The Free Dictionary]

Context:

We must have a care; even joking about a dishonourable manoevre such as we have been adumbrating tonight, leave alone putting into practice, might deter future benefactors.

Wondrous Words Wednesday

Kathy over at Bermudaonion's Weblog hosts Wondrous Words Wednesday. If you come across a word (or two) while reading that is new to you and would like to share your new knowledge, then hop over to Kathy's place and link up!

Here's what I've got this week from An Author Bites the Dust by Arthur W. Upfield:

Mulga forests: The mulga can be a small tree up to 9 m, with a well-defined main stem and angled branches, or a shrub 2 to 5 m tall with highly angled branches. The species has a very wide distribution, from Western Australia near Shark Bay, through central Australia to mid-west Queensland and New South Wales.

Gibber flats: barren places that are covered with small stones; characteristic of the Australian Outback

Context: It is a far cry from the inland plains and mulga forests and gibber flats, swooning in the grip of the relentless sun, to the Valley of the Yarra, bright green an luscious and temperatre. (p. 22)

Verdure: The lush greenness of flourishing vegetation.

Context: So here he was a thousand miles or so from his own stamping grounds, seated at ease a few yards from a main highway instead of a winding camel pad, living in a country of flowing water and green verdure instead of flowing sand and brick-red, sun-baked earth. (p. 23-4)

Wondrous Words Wednesday

Kathy over at Bermudaonion's Weblog hosts Wondrous Words Wednesday. If you come across a word (or two) while reading that is new to you and would like to share your new knowledge, then hop over to Kathy's place and link up!

Here's what I've got this week from Burial Deferred by Jonathan Ross:

Architraves:

1. The lowermost part of an entablature (or beam) in classical architecture that rests directly on top of a column. Also called epistyle.

2. The molding around a door or window.

Context: ...the tall windows in its lower two stories mullioned and topped with moulded architraves. (p. 24)

Ineluctable: not to be avoided, changed, or resisted
Detritus: Accumulated material; debris

Context: With the ineluctable routine of a murder investigation under way, his staff busy ferreting for the detritus of violent death, the confidence of a fully-equipped mind seemed to be back with him. (p. 110)

Wondrous Words Wednesday

Kathy over at Bermudaonion's Weblog hosts Wondrous Words Wednesday. If you come across a word (or two) while reading that is new to you and would like to share your new knowledge, then hop over to Kathy's place and link up!

Here's what I've got this week from How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu:

Diegetical: In a diegetic manner or way [Oh, that helps...onward to...]
Diegetic: Of or relating to diegesis [Now I understand completely...]
Diegesis: A narration or recitation

Context: A man, as the theory goes, falling through time at a constant rate of acceleration, will not, absent any visual or other contextual clues, be able to distinguish between (i) acceleration caused by a force that is diegetical in nature and (ii) an extra-diegetical force.

Um. Okay. Do we all understand now? This is on page 33...I'm still trying to settle into the book and see if I like it. There have been some very interesting and some very funny lines, but overall I'm a bit lost.

Wondrous Words Wednesday (On Thursday)

Kathy over at Bermudaonion's Weblog hosts Wondrous Words Wednesday. If you come across a word (or two) while reading that is new to you and would like to share your new knowledge, then hop over to Kathy's place an link up! I'm running late this week....life has gotten hectic.

Here is what I've got From Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker :

Castellation: furnished with turrets and battlements like a castle

Context: all along the ridge the rock cropped out, bare and bleak, but broken in a rough natural castellation.

Paroxysm: A sudden attack or violent expression of a particular emotion or activity

Context: Within the niche Lady Arabella cowered in a paroxysm of fear.

Raucous: rough-sounding and harsh; boisterous and disorderly

Context: In a voice which was raucous and brutal--much like that which is heard when a wife is being beaten by her husband in a slum--he hissed out, his syllables cutting through the roaring of the storm....

From Whose Body? by Dorothy L Sayers

Vademecum: Something regularly carried about by a person

Context: I measured it with my stick--the gentleman-scout's vademecum, I call it--it's marked off in inches.

I could guess castellation from the context and both paroxysm and raucous were familiar to me...but when I found myself groping to put into words what they meant, I figured I better look them up and share. I completely missed vademecum on my previous readings of Sayers and had no clue what this was.

Wondrous Words Wednesday

Kathy over at Bermudaonion's Weblog hosts Wondrous Words Wednesday. If you come across a word (or two) while reading that is new to you and would like to share your new knowledge, then hop over to Kathy's place and link up!

Here's what I've gathered so far from this week's reading:

From Eight White Nights by Andre Aciman (p36)

Asymptotically: A line whose distance to a given curve tends to zero. The line may or may not intersect its associated curve.

Context: Should I put my arm around her? Asymptotically?

{And if you're wondering "What the heck?" So was I--that's why I didn't even come close to finishing this book...it was all like that.}

From The Woman in Black by Susan Hill:

Abstemious: sparing or moderate in eating or drinking

Context (p. 23): Mr. Bentley suffered from gout, to which he would never refer by name, though his suffering need not have given him any cause for shame, for he was an abstemious man.

Lugubrious: mournful, dismal, or gloomy--especially in an exaggerated way

Context (p. 25): On my way out of the building, the lugubrious Tomes knocked on the glass of his cubby-hole and handed me a thick brown envelope marked DRABLOW.

épergne: large table centerpiece--usually made of silver

Context (p. 73): The furniture had a faded bloom from the salt in the air and the candlesticks and épergne were tarnished, the linen cloths stiffly folded and interleaved with yellowy tissue, the glass and china dusty.

Wondrous Words Wednesday

Kathy over at Bermudaonion's Weblog hosts Wondrous Words Wednesday. If you come across a word (or two) while reading that is new to you and would like to share your new knowledge, then hop over to Kathy's place and link up!

This week I've been reading Shroud of Darkness by E. C. R. Lorac and have found the following:

Noisome:

1. Having an extremely offensive smell.

2. Disagreeable; unpleasant

Context: So they proceeded up the carriageway, while the thickest "London particular" for half a century swirled round them, noisome, poisonous, terrifying: a monster of a fog, strangling all movement in the streets, weighing down the cheerful, terrifying the fearful, dealing death to the frail.

Soignée: Elegant, well-groomed, sophisticated (you would think more of that French I took would have stuck)

Context: She had dark, straight hair, cropped like a man's, very soignée and well brushed, and dark eye with George-Robeyish eyebrows.

Wondrous Words Wednesday

Kathy over at Bermudaonion's Weblog hosts Wondrous Words Wednesday. If you come across a word (or two) while reading that is new to you and would like to share your new knowledge, then hop over to Kathy's place and link up!

This week I've been working on Colour Scheme by Ngaio Marsh and found the following:

Adze: an axe or woodcarving tool

Context: "Seen from a distance, it resembled a gigantic wishbone adorned with a hairy crest. It was by this crest that they held it, standing well away from the two shafts, one of which was wooden while the other glinted dully in sunlight. It was a Maori adze.

Corroboree: a ceremonial meeting of Australian Aborigines; also used in the northwest Australia to define theatrical practices as different from ceremony

Context: The men on the top of the mound--there were two of them now beside [Septimus]Falls--squatted close to each other as if they held a corroboree.

Recrudescence: a reoccurance of symptoms in a patient whose disease seems to have been cured or put in remission. A relapse.

Context: Your anatomical uncle says he doesn't think there will be a recrudescence of the fibrositis, which is, I consider, a magic phrase.