New Vocabulary, 2nd Edition

The old thread was becoming unwieldy.

From The Size of the World by Joan Silber:

meretricious
1. alluring by a show of flashy or vulgar attractions; tawdry.
2. based on pretense, deception, or insincerity.
3. pertaining to or characteristic of a prostitute.

"... they were examples of a stream of clear water outside the meretricious swamp I mucked around in." p. 55

I've actually finished this book, but I was excited to find this word in Reading the OED:

Petrichor (n.) The pleasant loamy smell of rain on the ground, especially after a long dry spell.

I've spent my whole life loving rain (contrary to most of my friends), and a big part of my fondness for it is that smell. It was great to find that there is a word for it.

I can't figure out this touchstone, sorry

Sutpen, I have always loved the smell of rain, particularly near or in the woods. I find it comforting.

Sutpen, if the book that appears after you've enclosed it in square brackets is not the one you're after, then click on "others" (listed under the Touchstones heading to the right) and LT will load the other book options for you. Hope this helps :)

Reading the OED; is that the one?

Robert

From The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa:

hagiographic - writing which is excessively flattering

From Origin by Diana Abu-Jaber:

penumbra -

1 a: a space of partial illumination (as in an eclipse) between the perfect shadow on all sides and the full light b: a shaded region surrounding the dark central portion of a sunspot
2: a surrounding or adjoining region in which something exists in a lesser degree : fringe
3: a body of rights held to be guaranteed by implication in a civil constitution
4: something that covers, surrounds, or obscures : shroud

From The Final Solution: A Story of Detection:

prolix -
1 : unduly prolonged or drawn out : too long
2 : marked by or using an excess of words

From Ivanhoe:

ambuscade: a forest ambush

exchequer: an office originating in England, responsible for collecting and maintaining royal funds

From Ivanhoe:

ambuscade: a forest ambush

exchequer: an office originating in England, responsible for collecting and maintaining royal funds

From The Flame Trees of Thika:

francolin: a genus of partridges, primarily from South Asia and Africa

From The Leopard:

hieratic: a highly stylized or formalized pose or shape

It was used to describe the poses of hunting dogs who have scented prey.

scrutator:

I cannot find a definition for "scrutator".....In context, it seems as if it might mean something along the lines of a a person who scrutinizes ballots, like an election judge.

My google search for define:scrutator came up essentially empty, but when I deleted define: I got a page of mostly useful information. A scrutator is one who scrutinizes, so it looks like you got it right.

Robert

from Confederates in the Attic:

Hagiography: any idealizing or worshiping biography (2nd def., which applies in this book; 1st def. is: biography of a saint).

Love this thread--thanks hemlokgang!

From The God Delusion:

tergiversation - derivative of tergiversate

tergiversate:
1. equivocate
2. change one's loyalties

From Outcast United: A Regugee Team, an American Town:

liminality: the state of being caught between two worlds

# 17 hemlokgang: What a wonderful word. It's new to me too, but one I am looking forward to using.

From The Forsyte Saga:

suzerain: a superior feudal lord to who fealty is due

From The Insulted and Humiliated by Fyodor Dostoevsky:

pennate: a way too complicated definition, which I think means a bilateral elongated lifeform

From Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch:

sororal: of or relating to a characteristic of a sister

from The Tempest by Shakespeare:

Foison: abundance

From The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster:

metonym:
: a figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated (as “crown” in “lands belonging to the crown”)

I am not sure I understand that even now

From Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee:

sodality:
: an organized society or fellowship; specifically : a devotional or charitable association of Roman Catholic laity

23 hemlokgang, I have said without knowing whether it is true that I'll be able to die happy if I can understand the difference between metonymy and synecdoche. I have read multiple definitions and looked at countless examples. When I go out into the world and try to apply them to speech acts or worldly writing, I quite quickly get confused.

If you conquer metonym please let me know.

Robert

Read the books on metaphor by George Lakoff, Mark Turner, and Mark Johnson. Some are co-authored with Lakoff, but Mark Turner (& possibly Mark Johnson) has also gone solo. In Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, Lakoff discusses metonymy, and in all of these books, the basic metaphorical structure of all languages are laid out. Metonymy is part of metaphor, as is synecdoche, but a strong case can be made for categorizing metonymy and synechdoce together. Metonymy uses a part of something which is associated with a whole entity, as in "she counted heads" for 'she counted people. 'Synecdoche is using the whole for a part or a part for a whole. The latter is what metonymy does and, although I have a respectable Ph.D. in linguistics, I fail to see the difference between using the part for the whole and using something associated with a whole entity. Lakoff gives as examples of metonymy a waiter referring to a customer as "the ham and eggs at that table..." As for using a whole for a part, consider, "Wall St. isn't what it used to be." (which I'm pretty sure Lakoff considers metonymy although nitpickers will call it synecdoche) when you mean the brokers working in Wall St. not the street itself. Similarly "give me a hand" is usually considered metonymy, but fits the dictionary definition of synecdoche. I personally use the term 'metonymy' for both and I don't think I'm alone. I'm feeling too lazy to go check on my books on figurative language to see if others ignore the term synecdoche. I know that as a scholar, I have never been called out for using the term 'metonymy' for either the part for the whole, the whole for the part, or something associated with another entity being used for that entity. Rest easy. You can die happy if this is all it takes. The bottom line is there is no real difference and the very fact that you can't figure out what to use in a given instance is proof of that. There are all sorts of grammatical and semantic terms fabricated so that the uninitiated will feel stupid because they can't use the terms with accuracy. Just remember that there are fuzzy boundaries between all categories of language, and this is one of them.

Thanks, echaika......and Mr. Durick, just be happy!

Wow! echaika, what a great explanation! We can all sleep sounder tonight knowing that metonymy and synecdoche can be used interchangeably. :-)

Actually, I really did appreciate the explanation because I, too, had trouble remembering these terms--I thought they were opposites and I could never remember which was which!

from The House of Seven Gables

apothegm: a terse, witty instructive saying; a maxim.

"...for she had been trying to fathom the profundity and appositeness of this concluding apothegm."

(This was the "apothegm" in question: "...Infinity is big enough for us all--and Eternity long enough!")

from The Taker and Other Stories by Rubem Fonseca:

panegyric: a eulogistic oration or writing; also : formal or elaborate praise

I've noticed the word "panegyric" cropping up a few times lately--and one I don't remember encountering before I was on LT. Maybe it means I'm reading better books now! :-)

I've found 2 new words in Lord of Misrule, the autobiography of Christopher Lee:

Mulct - a penalty such as a fine (according to The Free Dictionary)

Guddle - to catch fish by groping with the hands under the banks or stones of a stream.

I love "guddle". Perfect description of the action.......

From Catriona:

rubicon: : a bounding or limiting line; especially : one that when crossed commits a person irrevocably

From The Woodlanders:

wamble: to move unsteadily or with a weaving or rolling motion

lucubration: laborious study

From Crime and Punishment:

taradiddle - 1. lie 2. pretentious nonsense

From The Constant Gardener

costermonger: hawker of fruit and vegetables from a barrow

From To Love and Be Wise by Josephine Tey

farouche—1. fierce, wild; 2. exhibiting withdrawn temperament and shyness coupled with an air of cranky, often sullen, fey charm.

The second meaning was the one intended by the speaker in describing one of the other ccharacters.

From: Holy Disorders by Edmund Crispin

Some of the most fun to be had in Crispin’s works is the vocabulary he uses. Here are a few samples of words you don’t often see in modern novels.

Two words I had to look up:

logomachy: 1. A dispute about words. 2. A dispute carried on in words only.
The second meaning was intended—“Fen resumed his wanderings, the Inspector his logomachy.”

atrabilious: 1. Inclined to melancholy. 2. Having a peevish disposition; surly.
The second meaning was intended—“Geoffrey’s mood became noticeably more atrabilious.”

Two words that I delighted to see because they are seldom used now:

premonitory: giving previous warning or notice.
“…a good deal of premonitory moaning.”

crepuscular: of or like twilight
“…indistinguishable in the crepuscular light.”

A “place name” that I really had to research!

Poictesme
“…float gently away into some Arcady, some genial Poictesme.”

Poictesme is a medieval French province created by the author James Branch Cabell (1879-1958) as the setting for his novels so he could contrive the history, customs, scenery, and morals instead of having to research an actual place. “Its history from 1234 to 1750 was carefully described, its laws and legends wrought into the fabric of Cabell’s stories. The diction of the country was an odd mixture of irony and circumlocution. It manners were courtly, its sexual morality free-and-easy. Cabelll’s escapism was curious, since it led to an existence that seemed romantic enough but was really futile, disillusioned, bitter.” (Source: Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia of American Literature, 1991)

From The Death of the Heart:

galantine: a cold dish consisting of boned meat or fish that has been stuffed, poached, and covered with aspic

Sounds gross to me!

From The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins:

verjuice

1 : the sour juice of crab apples or of unripe fruit (as grapes or apples); also : an acid liquor made from verjuice
2 : acidity of disposition or manner

From A Thread of Sky by Deanna Fei

asterism: a group or cluster of stars that may or may not form a constellation

From Galileo's Daughter
ortolan - an old world bunting esteemed as a table delicacy.
Poor bird.
The daughter was trying to obtain some for her father to eat.

From Into the Wild

Madrigal -
1. a medieval short lyrical poem in a strict poetic form
2. a complex polyphonic unaccompanied vocal piece on a secular text developed especially in the 16th and 17th centuries

"A madrigal of creaks and sharp reports - the sort of protest a large fir limb makes when it's slowly bent to the breaking point - served as a reminder that it is the nature of glaciers to move, the habit of seracs to topple." p139

An odd usage, I think.

From Wolf Hall:

porphyry:

: a rock consisting of feldspar crystals embedded in a compact dark red or purple groundmass

Who knew?

From Shadow Tag:

vernissage:

: a private showing or preview of an art exhibition

I've started reading Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series where every other page brings a new word. From Post Captain, the second in the series, comes the word curricle.

curricle - an open two wheeled carriage pulled by two horses abreast.

From the H.M.S. Surprise file, a common word with a completely new meaning from British slang, in referring to someone as a deep, old file they are a cunning, shrewd and artful person.

Another ordinary word with a new meaning is duff, as in the sailors looked forward to their duff on Sundays. It was a boiled or steamed, stiff flour pudding sometimes flavored with currants, citron or spices.

From Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, we have collops, which is according to dictionary.com...

Collops are a traditional Scottish dish. It can be created using either thin slices or minced meat of either beef, lamb or venison. This is combined with onion, salt, pepper, and suet, then stewed, baked or roasted with optional flavourings according to the meat used. It is traditionally served garnished with thin toast and mashed potato.

Twingle

from the OED:To twist, twine, wriggle, writhe. As in something a caught eel does.

The book I encountered this in was the Oxford English Dictionary. Okay, yes, I know that's the mother of all dictionaries, and not a novel. But I was writing something, and wanted to say "twinge" (meaning a small bit or nip), and at the same time I wanted to use "tingle" (meaning a thrilling tickling) and came up with "twingle". So I checked the OED, and alas, the word has already been invented (1645, apparently) and defined as something else.

From Cloud Atlas:

terraqueous: of both land and water
augur: to foretell the future using omens
arrack: an Arab sweet liquor
condign: deserved
atrabilious: given to or marked by melancholy
marae: cannot find the definition

For what it's worth according to Wikipedia, a marae is a sacred place in early Polynesian cultures, particularly of the Maoris in New Zealand.

Thank you, varielle!

From Chess Story:

famulus: a private secretary or attendant

"In spite of the hour, the parson could not refrain from challenging his semiliterate famulus."

From Beirut 39:

plangent: : having a loud reverberating sound
2
: having an expressive and especially plaintive quality

From Pope Joan

•Intinction

is the Eucharistic practice of partly dipping the consecrated bread, or host, into the consecrated wine before distributing it to the communicant.

There's a big controversy in the book about Joan's (John's) use of this method of administering communion to avoid the spread of disease rather than having the communicants actually drink from the same goblet.

One could learn a lot from this thread.

From The Tin Drum:

occiput: the back part of the head or skull

As a labor and delivery nurse I have to say that occiput is a very familiar word.

Context, context, context....never been a labor and delivery nurse! :-)

Well, I've been IN labor and delivery (twice) but I didn't notice that word. I was a little distracted.

LOL....4 times for me and distraction is putting it mildly!

Ah, but if all went well that baby's occiput was probably in just the right presentation. LOA - left occiput anterior - the best of all possible worlds.

Also from The Tin Drum:

sacerdotal: priestly

From Nobody's Home:

syncretism: the combination of different forms of belief or practice, the fusion of two or more originally different inflectional forms

hagiography: biography of saints or venerated persons, idealizing or idolizing biography

hadit: cannot find it in the dictionary.....help?

hemlokgang, given the Balkan connection in the book, I suspect some talk of Islam. If 'hadit' is in an Islamic setting it may be a variation on Hadith, the sayings of the prophet.

It is, capitalized, the name of a variation on an Egyptian god.

Robert

Thank you, Robert! I think you are absolutely correct! No surprise there!

From The Uncommon Reader:

1) invigilate: to keep watch; especially British : to supervise students at an examination

2) opsimath: one who learns only late in life

From Lodgings, a collection of poetry:

1) epithalamia: a song or poem in honor of a bride and bridegroom
2) dromomania: an exaggerated desire to wander

P.S. - This just in from The Endangered Word Project.....insouciance.....use it as often as possible to help save it from extinction!

No, insouciance is endangered? Well, I guess folk now are more blatant.

From Fifty Years and Other Poems by James Weldon Johnson:

pelf: money; riches; gain; especially when dishonestly acquired

More from Lodgings:

1) asyndeton: omission of the conjunctions that ordinarily join coordinate words or clauses (as in “I came, I saw, I conquered”)

2) oneiric: of or relating to dreams : dreamy

From Dom Casmurro:

1) ciborium: a vessel used in the Christian Church to hold the eucharist or an arched canopy over an altar standing on four pillars

2) aspersoriam: the basin or vessel in the Roman Catholic Church used to hold holy water

3) panegyric: a speech or phrase in praise of someone

From Light in August:

1) ratiocination: the process of exact thinking, a reasoned train of thought

2) perspicuous: : plain to the understanding especially because of clarity and precision of presentation

3) maculate: marked with spots, blotched, impure, besmirched

I'd been forgetting about this thread....

from London: The Biography

jeopardous - the adjectival form of "jeopardy," so you can pretty much get it from context, but it's a fun word to use, no?

#72 - maculate - new word for me. And I like that now I know where the word immaculate comes from!

From The Pale King:

lemniscate: a figure-eight shaped curve whose equation in polar coordinates is ρ2=a2 cos 2θ or ρ2=a2 sin 2θ

#75 - and I supposed to know what that means now? ;-)

It is usually reckoned to be the infinity symbol.

Robert

In reading this thread I'm amused to find that I've read several of the books here, but never noticed the words mentioned. I knew several, so that's an explanation for those, but the others must have been so obvious to me from the sentence/paragraph that I didn't need to look them up. Then, again, maybe I did and have forgotten. I keep both an OED an an atlas next to me when I read.

More from The Pale King:

1)anfractuous: full of windings and intricate turnings, tortuous
2) prolixly: unduly prolonged or drawn out, too long
3) imbrication: an overlapping of edges (as of tiles or scales)
4) semions: ?

Got me. Not monkeys as in simian or residents of the town of Semiana in Lombardy. Google is no help. What was the context?

from Grace Williams Says It Loud
hussif - a small sewing kit

From The Oxford Handbook of Fascism

palingenesis -- rebirth

Robert

From The Pale King:

parenchyma: the essential and distinctive tissue of an organ or an abnormal growth as distinguished from its supportive framework

From Planet of Exile by Ursula Le Guin

lapidation -
stoning: the act of pelting with stones; punishment inflicted by throwing stones at the victim (even unto death).

From The Pale King:

1)hortation: urge or yearning

2)peplum: a short skirtlike section usually attached to the waistline of a blouse, jacket, dress, and made usually with a flared, pleated, or ruffled design

3) inedia: couldn't find definition

4)algesia: sensitiveness to pain

5) defilade: to arrange (fortifications) so as to protect the lines from frontal or enfilading fire and the interior of the works from plunging or reverse fire

6) trilby:a soft felt hat with indented crown

I've been doing the Jumble in the newspaper for five decades. One Sunday in 1964 neither my girlfriend nor I could get one word. We went in to campus where we looked up a friend who had access to the IBM 360 mainframe and asked him whether the computer could solve it. He wrote a quick little program, I think in Fortran, which did not account for the identity of the two p's and printed out all 720 permutations. We circled everything that might be a word. My girlfriend sat down with the list and a dictionary until she identified 'peplum.' I have told that story from time to time, and there have been several women who thought an educated and worldly person should recognize the word. Women's swim suits of the sixties and earlier often had a peplum, if I understand the word correctly. I see that my Firefox spell checker does not recognize the word.

Robert

Most often these days you see a peplum on a wedding gown. My hometown paper's social pages still goes into minute detail on the gown's description so we see it from time to time.

Inedia is Latin for fasting.

Thanks, varielle!

The blouse that formed part of my secondary school uniform had a peplum. It had a pleated design. :)

Peplums were very popular in women's fashion in the 80s.

From Death Comes for the Archbishop

gigot: a leg of lamb or mutton used in cooking (or a 1962 movie)

From Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig

1)paralipomena:things passed over but added as a supplement

More from Beware of Pity:

1)philippic:a discourse or declamation full of acrimonious invective, a philippic so withering that it roused a lethargic Senate

2) myrmidon: a follower or subordinate who unquestioningly or pitilessly executes orders

From The Mighty Angel by Jerzy Pilch:

1) exegetes/one who practices exegesis, an explanation, most often of religious texts

2) farinaceous/containing or made of meal or flour b : containing or rich in starch

3)tumid/formed as if by swelling or inflation

From Clouds by Aristophanes:

1) casuistry: the study of or the doctrine that deals with cases of conscience b : the reasoning about or resolution of questions of right or wrong in conduct through the application of religious or secular ethical principles and rules

2) empyrean: the earthly perfection of the individual to a height no less empyrean than Luther's ideal of religious salvation

From The Inheritance of Loss:

1)borborygmus: a rumbling sound made by the movement of gas in the intestine
2) pisciculture: fish culture
3) eructation: the act of belching gas from the stomach
4) maund: a hand basket
5) cupules: a small cup-shaped depression
6) gompa: Can't find the definition
7) purdah: a practice inaugurated by Muslims and later adopted by various Hindus and found especially in India that involves the seclusion of women from public observation by means of concealing clothing including the veil and by the use of high-walled enclosures, screens, and curtains within the home
8) pangolin: any of several Asiatic and African edentate mammals of Manis or related genera of the order Pholidota having the body covered with large flattened reddish brown imbricated horny scales, feeding chiefly on ants, and somewhat resembling in habit and structure the American anteaters
9) carom:a game played by two or four persons with round wooden counters on a large square board having corner pockets

...and I am only halfway through the book!!

From A game of Thrones lots of info about horses.

Destrier - A type of warhorse
Garron - A hardy pony sort of like a Shetland

Also from The Inheritance of Loss:

10) cuprous: of, relating to, or containing copper in the univalent state
11) chitinuous: of a white or colorless amorphous horny substance that forms part of the hard outer integument of insects, crustaceans, and some other invertebrates and occurs also in fungi, being a polysaccharide structurally similar to cellulose except that the repeating unit is derived from acetylglucosamine instead of glucose

From The All of It :

1) yirrol: cannot find a definition
2) bourne: an intermittent stream on chalk downs

Double post deleted

Yirrol seems to be a place name and the name of a lake in the Sudan. How was it used?

Hemlokgang: I looked up "yirrol" in the OED and came up blank. If it's not there, it's not considered an English word. Does the Sudan connection make any sense? Now I'm curious to hear the sentence.

I have to laugh on this one......"yirrol" is Irish slang for a year old ewe......LOL!

Cool.

Robert

Too funny. Sometimes it doesn't pay to overthink.

Maybe it's a ewe lost in the Sudan. :)

LOL......you just have to love language!

From Sea of Poppies:

1) elision: the act or an instance of dropping out or omitting something : OMISSION, CUT

#109 -- great word; also related to the more common ellipsis "marks or a mark (as …) indicating an omission (as of words) or a pause" I love the ellipsis . . .

Good to know Nickelini!

From Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa:

1) proparoxytones: having an accent or heavy stress on the antepenultimate syllable.
2) jeremiads: a prolonged lamentation or mournful complaint.
3) oligophrenics: less than normal mental development.
4) acromegalics: a chronic disease characterized by enlargement of the bones of the head, the soft parts of the feet and hands, and sometimes other structures, due to excessive secretion of growth hormone by the pituitary gland.
5) ukase: any order or proclamation by an absolute or arbitrary authority.
6) oneiric: of or pertaining to dreams.

Wow. That list makes me scared to read Llosa!

I love Llosa! Don't be put off! I am halfway through this book and have laughed out loud several times!

Well, I had thought that penultimate stress was oxytonic and that antepenultimate stress was paroxytonic. Without looking it up, I'm wondering (a) where the pro- came from and (b) whether I'm wrong.

Robert

Robert, If you find the answers for a or b, let us know......I think....

A couple more words from The All of It:

AUTOCHTHONOUS
1: indigenous, native
2: formed or originating in the place where found

gal·li·mau·fry/ˌgaləˈmôfrē/Noun: 1.A confused jumble or medley of things.

From Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter:

1) coprolalia: the obsessive use of scatological language.
2) chrematistic: of, denoting, or relating to money-making

From Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World by Catalina de Erauso:

1) prebendary: an honorary canon

From The Book of Nightmares by Galway Kinnell:

1) fontanel: the hollow of the neck
2) aceldama: a field of bloodshed, slaughter, or butchery
3) omphalos: archaic word for the umbilical cord

My regular dictionary had a stroke on these words, so I had to break out my OED.

#120, 2) thus omphalocele a birth defect in which the intestines herniate through the umbilical cord. Ah, it makes sense now.

I always thought the fontanel was the soft spot of the skull on a newborn baby. Live and learn!

-122, You're right. Evidently there is more than one meaning, and we get to keep NielsenGW's soft spot.

Phalarope - a type of wading shorebird of some interest to Dr. Maturin in The Far Side of the World.

Zimmer--the British English term for a walker as used by Mignon in Believing the Lie by Elizabeth George

From Night Train to Lisbon:

1) casuistic: oversubtle; intellectually dishonest; sophistical

And from your definition: sophistical: adjective of the nature of sophistry.
Sophistry: a subtle, tricky superficially plausible, but generally falacious method of reasoning.
A very important word, especially now.

From Rommel? Gunner Who? A Confrontation in the Desert, by Spike Milligan:

nyctalopic: adj., from noun nyctalopia, night blindness.

Like that one!

From The Art of Fielding:

1) litotes: noun, always plural, understatement, especially that in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative of its contrary, as in “not bad at all.”

2) Prufrockian paralysis: The inability to utter what you want to say, after T.S. Eliot's character in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

From Vertical Motion by Can Xue:

acetabulum:
1) Anatomy . the socket in the hipbone that receives the head of the thighbone.
2) Zoology . any of the suction appendages of a leech, octopus, etc.

bosk: a small wood or thicket, especially of bushes.

From Between Silk and Cyanide:

solar topi: Slang name for a pith helmet (distinctive white hard-shell helmet seen on British explorers)

encomiums: : glowing and warmly enthusiastic praise; also : an expression of this

"While these, and many other encomiums, were being passed on ...." Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens.

From In The Skin of a Lion:

pelmanism: a system of training to improve the memory

Sign me up.

opprobrious: scurrilous, infamous, from "opprobrium", something that brings disgrace; public disgrace or ill fame that follows from conduct considered grossly wrong or vicious.

"...they assailed him with opprobrious names." Oliver Twist, used to described Fagan.

Or: Rush Limbaugh is one of the most opprobrious characters in culture today--unfortunately, he is not fictional.

LOL......or groan....

From 2666:

coprophagy: feeding on dung, as certain beetles

and political candidates and talk show hosts

LOL!

lol

From 2666...hold onto your hats!

orography: the branch of physical geography dealing with mountains
sacraphobia: fear of that which is sacred
gephyrophobia: fear of crossing bridges
peccatophobia: fear of committing sins
cliniphobia: fear of beds
tricophobia: fear of hair
verbophobia: fear of words
vestophobia: fear of clothes
iatrophobia: fear of doctors
gynophobia: fear of women
ombrophobia: fear of rain
thalassophobia: fear of the sea
anthophobia: fear of flowers
dendrophobia: fear of trees
optophobia: fear of opening the eyes
pedophobia: fear of children
ballistophobia: fear of bullets
tropophobia: fear of making changes or moving
agyrophobia: fear of streets or crossing the street
chromophobia: fear of certain colors
nyctophobia: fear of night
ergophobia: fear of work
decidophobia: fear of making decisions
anthrophobia: fear of people
astrophobia: fear of certain meteorological events
pantophobia: fear of everything
phobophobia: fear of fear itself
helicoidal: coiled or curving like a spiral
simurgh: monstrous bird, rational and ancient, in Persian mythology

From Scandal by Shusaku Endo:

biophilous: a love of life and the living world; the affinity of human beings for other life forms

Good word!

From Restless by William Boyd:

judder: to vibrate violently

So, a more emphatic form of shuddering? Yup, I can think of a few times in which I juddered.

From Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon (unless otherwise noted, the definitions came from the online version of Merriam-Webster:

contumelious: insolently abusive and humiliating
"He was nearly as gifted at languages than the contumelious myna."

verisimilitude: (helpfully) 1. the quality or state of being verisimilar 2. something verisimilar

verisimilar: 1. having the appearance of truth; probable 2. depicting realism (in art or literature)
"...closing his shirt over the wound he had suffered, in the name of verisimilitude..."
Oddly, the computer does not mind verisimilitude, but I'm getting spell check's red underline for verisimilar.

bambakion: I had to Google it - basically, it's a corselet, a piece of Byzantine armor

mahout: a keeper and driver of elephants

caravansary: an inn surrounding a court in eastern countries where caravans rested at night

shatranj: Another Google search led me to find out that this is a variant of chess

From Storm of Swords the word wens, as in a character was afflicted with wens, apparently a type of cyst that forms on the face. Interestingly I saw a commercial right after for Wen hair care products.

From Caleb's Crossing: to be clad in Adam's livery is to be naked.

All of these are from Noah Jacobs's The Toils of Language:

Alopecuria: The act of turning a defect into a virtue
Retromingent: Urinating backwards
Boustrophedonic: Weaving in a solid line left to right to left to right (and so forth); literally “as the ox plows”
Brolliology: The study of umbrellas
Pomological: Pertaining to apples
Ischial callosities: callouses formed on the hip joint
Kobold: A spirit or goblin
Kakodoxical: Having the wrong opinion or following the wrong doctrine
Tertius gaudens: A situation where a third party benefits from a conflict among two others
Brummagem: Showy but inferior and worthless
Tristich: A stanza or poem consisting of three lines
Termagant: A violent, turbulent, or brawling woman
Apolaustic: Devoted to enjoyment
Morigerous: Obedient
Charivari: A mock serenade with kettles, pans, horns, and other noisemakers, esp for a newly married couple
Opsimathy: A act of learning new things late in life
Callipygous: Having well-shaped buttocks
Solifidian: A person who maintains that faith alone is all that is necessary for salvation
Anacolutha: A oratorical construction involving a break in grammatical sequence
Tapinosis: A figure of speech whereby a person is given a name that diminishes their merit

Fantastic!

>150 NielsenGW: Trying to imagine the second one is disturbing.

So many of those are great, but kakadoxical gets my vote as best new word of the week. Followed by opsimathy (which I am now demonstrating), solifidia (for my sister) and Callipygous (for some sort of sign at the gym), followed by all the rest of these great descriptors.

Brolliology is definitely the most fun to say. It just rolls off the tongue.... :)

Brolliology hasn't made it into the OED, but it does seem to be quite widespread on the web. And there's a Christian Science Monitor article from 1991 that uses it, so it might be a real word.

154 / 155> It has quite a history:

1952: David Piper wrote an article for The Geographical Magazine entitled "Geo-Brolliology, or Climate and the Umbrella"
1970: Shows up a bit in T.S. Crawford's History of the Umbrella, which is then reviewed and discussed in The Library Journal Book Review and Punch that same year
1980: Gains entry into Richard B. Manchester's Mammoth Book of Fascinating Information
2004: Combined with another niche when discussed in The American Philatelist

...and now I have two more books I need to add to the collection.

From The Mill On The Floss:

irrefragable: not to be disputed or contested
fromenty: a kind of porridge made from hulled wheat boiled with milk, sweetened, and spiced
nidus: a place or point in an organism where a germ or other organism can develop or breed

From Lila Says:

nabe: slang for a neighborhood movie theater

From Pravda:

tessellation: form of small squares or blocks, as floors or pavements; form or arrange in a checkered or mosaic pattern.

quiddity: the quality that makes a thing what it is; the essential nature of a thing

purblind: nearly or partially blind; dim-sighted.

Hm, do you think J. K. Rowlings was trying to say something profound by naming her game quidditch?

Great minds think alike, Citizen! I was pondering the same question.....just as the characters evolve and learn about themselves and the world, so do they chase the elusive golden snitch....or...could it be they chase their own elusive essences?

More from Pravda:

steatopygous: extreme accumulation of fat on and about the buttocks, especially of women.

contrapposto: a representation of the human body in which the forms are organized on a varying or curving axis to provide an asymmetrical balance to the figure.

kraken: legendary sea monster causing large whirlpools off the coast of Norway.

viscid: having a glutinous consistency; sticky; adhesive; viscous.

contrapposto

It seems to me that I learned the concept with the word having a final L sound, but I don't see it as I try to google it.

Robert

Perfect example.....thank you, Robert!

rounsey - From A Feast for Crows. It's an ordinary, all-purpose horse that can be used for riding, carrying packs or trained for war.

From Pompeii: The Living City, by Alex Butterworth and Ray Laurence:

Peristyle: noun, architecture
1. a colonnade surrounding a building or an open space.
2. an open space, as a courtyard, surrounded by a colonnade.

The Wikipedia article for "peristyle" includes an image of a reconstructed peristyle from Pompeii.

From Sentenced to Prism by Alan Dean Foster:

Photovore (noun)

1. A robot (read organism) powered by solar cells that moves towards light to "feed".

"These growths are photovores, like many we have seen." p.74

From Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol:

britzka: a long horse-drawn carriage with a folding top over the rear seat and a rear-facing front seat

finical: finicky

shalloon: a light, twilled woolen fabric used chiefly for linings.

chibouk: a Turkish tobacco pipe with a stiff stem sometimes 4 or 5 feet (1.2 or 1.5 meters) long.

empyrean: the highest heaven, supposed by the ancients to contain the pure element of fire

quitrent: rent paid by a freeholder or copyholder in lieu of services that might otherwise have been required.

emendation: a correction or change, as of a text

gammer: an old woman

>2 lkernagh:: "meretricious" is one of my favorite words! I encountered it first in Jane Eyre.

I just read The Once and Future King, and it was the first time in a long while I really felt like I could have benefited from reading with a dictionary on hand -- although a lot of the unfamiliar vocab was about hawking/armour/weaponry. I kept a list on the back cover, but I lent the book out to a friend before I had a chance to look any up.

One I did figure out from context, though, was tonsure (n.), the mandated hairstyle for Christian monks, where the top of the head is shaved and the rest is left uncut.

(I may or may not have figured it by thinking of Sweeney Todd's tonsorial parlor in Fleet Street.)

Oh, another word I learned recently, and of which The Once and Future King gave me probably the only other example I'll even run across:

brach (n.), defined in the Oxford footnotes to Troilus and Cressida as a "bitch-hound", which is, incidentally, my new favorite insult. In that play, it was used by Thersites to call Patroclus a prostitute, because every word in Troilus and Cressida means prostitute.

In The Once and Future King, however, "brach" and "brachet" are used by King Pellinore to refer non-metaphorically to his female hunting dog. I was well-pleased to see the word actually used, having just learned it.

I like brach and brachet. I can't figure out why someone would think calling someone a female dog was such an insult. My female dogs are quite sweet and loving.

>170 Tafadhali:,171
I've come across brach a few times, but never bothered to look it up before, so I always assumed it was a Welsh word with a soft "-ch", just right for a sweet and loving dog. Apparently it actually comes from Old French and it's pronounced "bratch", which makes it sound much more like an insult. You live and learn...

I don't really get why female dogs get such a bad rap either, but in the Troilus and Cressida example I don't think the word "brach" itself was an insult so much as the implications that came with it about Patroculus' manliness. Thersites' calls him lots of things, like "she-wolf", that are not innately bad, they just sound ugly when Thersites says them. Especially when, as 172 points out, "brach" has such a harsh sound.

(And, of course, even though "bitch-hound" is perfectly correct terminology, it was so not what I was expecting when I looked at the footnote that it completely cracked me up.)

From The Warden by Anthony Trollope:

1) precentor: a person who leads a church choir or congregation in singing.
2) appanage: land or some other source of revenue assigned for the maintenance of a member of the family of a ruling house.
3) bedesman: a person kept in an almshouse
4) bosky: covered with bushes, shrubs, and small trees; woody
5) glebe: the cultivable land owned by a parish church or ecclesiastical benefice.
6) Puseyism: the religious opinions and principles of the Oxford movement, especially in its early phase, given in a series of 90 papers called Tracts for the Times, published at Oxford, England, 1833–41.

Thanks, hemlokgang. I didn't know one of them, well, maybe bedesman.

"Bedesman" made me think about George Eliot's "Adam Bede"......pleasant pondering.

Trollope is always good for a few arcane technical terms. I never realised before reading The Eustace diamonds that up to the late 19th century, paraphernalia had a highly specific meaning in English law, referring to those personal items (clothes, etc.) that a married woman was allowed to retain for her own use on her husband's death. (Everything else belonged to the husband's estate.)

Huh, I didn't know that about paraphernalia. Kind of like the rule of thumb. Oppression has lead to so many interesting words.
I know it was Adam Bede I was thinking of when I said I might know the word bedesman, and I don't think I've ever read the book. I do love George Eliot, maybe I should.

From Children in Reindeer Woods:

orgulous: haughty

From He Knew He Was Right:

contumacious: adj., stubbornly perverse or rebellious; willfully and obstinately disobedient.

I knew contumacious, but orgulous? I can't imagine a less haughty word for haughty.

Pursy- from Hashish: a Smuggler's Tale. It means short of breath or asthmatic especially in reference to horses. In reference to people it can mean obese. In the text I took the reference to mean a fat guy who was short of breath.

Now, I can see orgulous meaning the same thing as pursy. Can't you just hear the fat guy wheezing with orgulous?

LOL!

From The Guinea Pigs:

monophyletic: consisting of organisms descended from a single taxon

Anybody know a definition for the word....pegamoid?

I see that it may be some sort of varnish. Not sure if it has other meanings.

Hmmmm....have to check the context...thanks varielle!

>187 varielle:,188
Seems to be an imitation leather material developed a bit before 1900, used in bookbinding or upholstery. The OED is a bit vague about what it actually is; Google turned up an encyclopedia entry in Swedish: http://runeberg.org/nfca/0203.html - as far as I can work out, it's made from nitrocellulose, camphor and alcohol, so if you have some it might be wise to keep it away from naked flames!

LOL and thanks, thorold!

I had a quick look at some patents that mention pegamoid: they propose uses covering all sorts of applications where something needs to be flexible and impervious - as well as upholstery and bookbinding there were "Shields for the Protection of the Hands and Feet of the Drivers of Motor Vehicles Traction Engines or Tramcars", cycle saddles and tyres, conveyor belts, tents, blackboards, advertising cards, even corsets. Some of them refer to "pegamoid paper" or "pegamoid cloth", so maybe pegamoid came as a liquid coating (as Varielle suggests) that could be applied to a flexible substrate.

Edited to add: the results were from 1896 to the mid-1950s, with a couple of outliers in the sixties, and predominantly British, German or French. There were only two or three US mentions, so it was probably a product that had a different trade name in the US.

For completeness: the Google n-gram: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=pegamoid&year_start=1800&ye...

Nice research!

More from The Alexandria Quartet:

quinquereme: an ancient Roman galley with five banks of oars on each side

porpentine: like a porcupine

mumchance: silent; struck dumb

trismegistus: a name variously ascribed by Neoplatonists and others to an Egyptian priest or to the Egyptian god Thoth, to some extent identified with the Grecian Hermes: various mystical, religious, philosophical, astrological, and alchemical writings were ascribed to him.

khamseen: a hot southerly wind, varying from southeast to southwest, that blows regularly in Egypt and over the Red Sea for about 50 days, commencing about the middle of March.

193 - I can appreciate khamseen as I am just finishing up Hashish: A Smuggler's Tale, which depicts the perils of sailing the Red Sea and the violent and treacherous winds there. I never previously thought of it as being a particularly windy place.

From Binocular Vision:

strabismus - inability of one eye to attain binocular vision with the other because of imbalance of the muscles of the eyeball —called also squint

More from The Alexandria Quartet:

hebetude: the state of being dull; lethargy.
fatidic: prophetic
pullulation: sending forth sprouts, buds, etc.; germinate; sprout.
desuetude: the state of being no longer used or practiced.
mephitic: offensive to the smell

But mephitic sounds so pleasant.

From Women of Algiers in Their Apartment:

laterite: a reddish ferruginous soil formed in tropical regions by the decomposition of the underlying rocks.

From Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum:

samizdat: a clandestine publishing system within the Soviet Union, by which forbidden or unpublishable literature was reproduced and circulated privately -- or a work or periodical circulated by this system.

In re #199. Thanks to NGW for reminding us of this, though I would be surprised if this is news to many people. Still, the reminder is certainly good. Or perhaps, the real significance is to remind us that the more things change, the more they remain . . . you get it. I don't consider myslef paranoiac by any means, but quite apart from the old Soviet context, samizdat (or its equivalent) this is a phenomenon which one hopes to be functioning in those many societies where democratic liberties are not merely non-existent, but gleefully stomped-on by the various enemies of light (including some which are aggresively supported by the so-called "democracies"). I am not the first to point-out that the Internet has that capacity, even if it seems often -- at-least in the so-called "free world" -- to be awash, or even choked in trivia, pre-adolescent Tweets, or downright mind-poisoning. Peace to all. And don't forget, the best way to be free is to live free, however much you, not just take tose freedoms for granted. -- Goddard