Tag: wondrous words

I found some new gardening terms this week from reading Making Things Grow Outdoors:

Tilth: \”This, by the way, is what the experts mean when they tell us to keep the soil rich and in good tilth.\”
Tilth is the rough texture in soil

Spit, Humus: \”If you have not found it [subsoil] by the time you have gone down two spits, the garden has an excellent depth of humus…\”
S- the depth of a shovel blade
H- dark brown or black substance consisting of decayed animal and plant matter in soil

Crozier: \”A whole generation of so-called gardeners are living in houses surrounded by land in which beans never uncurl like croziers from the soil…\”
The curled end of a young frond, or a crook on the end of a bishop\’s staff

Visit the host of Wondrous Words Wednesday at Bermudaonion\’s Weblog.

My wondrous words of the week come from three different books. These new words I found while reading Kon-Tiki:

Cachalot– Use: \”Most often they were small porpoises and toothed whales which gamboled about us in large schools on the surface of the water, but now and then there were big cachalots, too…\”
Definition: a sperm whale

Spurious– Use: \”On this little sailing trip up to the spurious reef we had learned quite a lot about the effectiveness of the centerboards…\”
Definition: not genuine; false, invalid or lacking in authenticity

Anemometer– Use:\”Herman was out all the time with his anemometer measuring the squalls of gale force…\”
Definition: an instrument that measures the force and speed of wind

Polyps– Use: \”But this group of islands is also known as the Low or Dangerous Archipelago, because the whole formation has been built up entirely by coral polyps and consists of treacherous submerged reefs…\”
Definition: a small sea creature with a hollow cylindrical body and a ring of tentacles around the mouth

Do you know what\’s crazy about this word? I keep a dream diary. In one years back, I dreamt I was in a long dark room full of saltwater aquariums, and tiny marine creatures were escaping and floating in the air. I was trying to catch them, yelling about \”the polyps!\” But when I woke up I thought: what the heck is a polyp? I must have met the word before, as I could draw it from the dream (something like this), but consciously I had no idea what it was. (If I can find my old drawing, I\’ll share it with you.)

Copra– Use: \”Teka had gradually acquired the supreme position because he could speak French and count and write, so that the village was not cheated when the schooner came from Tahiti to fetch copra.\”
Definition: dried coconut flesh

These words I came across in The Sheep Dog:

Scour: Use- \”Some milk is good, but too much will cause scour.\”
Definition: diarrhea in livestock

Mollycoddle: Use- \”We don\’t want to encourage mollycoddling, but we do want to give the pups a chance.\”
Definition: to be overprotective and indulgent

Wether: Use- \”… going so fleet of foot as would outstrip a four-year-old mountain wether.\”
Definition: a castrated ram

Tup: Use- \”A \’clean gather\’ must be achieved… otherwise some ewes will be missing when the tups go out, and their year\’s production will be lost.\”
Definition: a male sheep

Raddle: Use- \”… the tups are caught to be fed, and raddled with bright color on their chests to mark the ewes.\”
Definition: to mark sheep for identification

Speaned: Use- \”At this stage some of the lambs may be speaned, and the process of taking the lambs off the ewes causes some of the hardest work of the dog\’s year.\”
Definition: to wean

And these words I read in Chalice:

Demesne: Use- \”… nearly the entire citizenry of the demesne seemed to have found an excuse to be somewhere in or near the House…\”
Definition: realm, domain, estate or landed property

Suborn: Use- \”The rods could not lie nor be suborned.\”
Definition: to bribe or incite (a person) to commit a wrongful act

Crabbed: Use- \”…while she was urgently reading all the crabbed and fusty old records she could lay her hands on…\”
Definition: difficult to read or understand

Tisane: Use- \”If you\’re going to offer me something to drink, Mirasol, tisane would be nice, but your mead would be better.\”
Definition: a drink made of leaves, herbs or flowers

Sennight: Use- \”Could you say to yourself, \’Yes, here is a break- a roughness, a troubling- that was not here a sennight ago\’?\”
Definition: a week

Perforce, Volatile: Use- \”Last minute changes were destabilising, which was why battlefield cups, which were perforce rare, were also notoriously volatile.\”
P definition: by necessity, forced by circumstances
V definition: inconstant, fickle; easily evaporating, fleeting

Orotund: Use- \”The Grand Seneschal managed to insert an orotund phrase or two…\”
Definition: pompous, bombastic; or full of sound

Stooker: Use- \”And once, as Mirasol skirted along a freshly cut field, she saw the late stookers lifting and tossing their sheaves.\”
Definition: one who sets up sheaves of grain in the field

Eligary: Use- \”Before the Master had been sent to Fire by his brother, he would have been trained to use a sword, an eligary and a bow…\”
I could not find a definition for this word. I\’m assuming it\’s some kind of weapon. Does anyone know it?

Visit Wondrous Words Wednesdays for more newly discovered words!

These new words (including some I\’ve seen before, but was unsure of their exact meaning) came from Enslaved by Ducks:

Bovid– \” \’I had no idea,\’ I marveled, still stricken by the bovid apparition.\”
Definition: Of the family Bovidae, which includes hoofed, hollow-horned ruminants such as cattle, sheep and goats (I had to look this one up because I thought bovine were just cattle. I didn\’t know it also meant sheep and goats)

Filbert– \”His smorgasboard included Cheerios, freshly grated filberts, succulent garden peas, sweet corn sliced off the cob each morning, and an occasional dollop of pasta.\”
Definition: A hazelnut

Hokum– \”I like to think that my decisions in life are guided by the rudder of common sense rather than blown willy-nilly by folkloric hokum and balderdash.\”
Definition: Something that is nonsense, untrue (balderdash has almost exactly the same meaning)

Sebum– \”Weaver would land on my head and gleefully begin drilling for dander and sebum.\”
Definition: Oily substance secreted by the sebaceous glands, naturally lubricates your hair

Bromeliad, Docent– \”Truly he belonged in the open sky or, at the very least, in a large aviary packed with palm trees, bromeliads and docents.\”
B– a type of tropical american plant with long, stiff leaves (including pineapples)
D– a tour guide (or professor)

Mesmer, Grommet, Phlogiston– \”Here and there a flanged mesmer valve or grommeted phlogiston regulator emerged from the heaped earth like a Chichen Itzan artifact, but the body of the antique pump remained hidden.\”
M- Mesmer was an Austrian physician in the 1700\’s. I still don\’t know a mesmer valve is
G- an eyelet reinforced with metal or plastic
P- an imaginary element formerly once believed to be the substance of fire

And these words are from Kon-Tiki:

Mole– \”I intentionally stopped the car a long way off and walked the whole length of the mole to stretch my legs thoroughly for the last time for no one knew how long.\”
Definition: a stone wall built in the sea as a breakwater

Dolphin-\”…when a big flying fish thudded on board we used it as bait and at once pulled in two large dolphins weighing from twenty to thirty-five pounds each. This was food for several days.\”
Definition: a large, brightly colored marine game fish with a steep blunt forehead and a long continuous dorsal fin (also called dolphinfish or mahi-mahi)

Philologist– \”… philologists have pointed out that on all the widely scattered South Sea islands the name of the sweet potato is kumara, and kumara is just what the sweet potato was called among the old Indians in Peru.\”
Definition: a classical scholar or student of the liberal arts

Pelagic– \”And so the Kon-Tiki soon began to swarm with stowaways. They were small pelagic crabs.\”
Definition: of ocean waters, especially those far from land

Check out Wondrous Words Wednesdays on Bermudiaonion\’s weblog for more new vocab!

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All of the new words I found this week came from The Grail War, which I am still trudging through (almost done!) You can visit Bermudiaonion\’s weblog to see what new words other readers have discovered.

Spang– \”Prang saw Parsival move: a blur, a flying shadow, a flashing of steel, spangs, crunchings, screams, sighs, curses, men scattering and falling like rats before a striking cat.\”
Definition: To leap, cast, jerk or bang. It can also be an adverb meaning precisely, exactly.

Putative: \”…he stayed and resisted and frustrated his putative master.\”
Definition: Inferred, or or accepted as true on inconclusive grounds (implying it wasn\’t his true master?)

Sardonic: \”She shook her sardonic head.\”
Definition: Scornfully or cynically mocking

Nonce: \” \’I care little for the nonce, whether it be demons or mooncalfs you follow.\’ \”
Definition: The present or particular occasion

Laconically: \” \’This is my command,\’ he said laconically. \’Who in hell asks?\’\”
Definition: Using few words, terse or concise

Vagary: \”Because of a vagary in the air currents, the fog was thinner here.\”
Definition: An extravagant or erratic notion or action

new words!
I\’ve recently enjoyed reading other bloggers\’ vocabulary discoveries with Wondrous Words Wednesdays, so I thought I\’d share a new word I came across while reading My Beaver Colony:

Gimcrack– \”The Indians had sold their daily bread and their souls for fire water and gimcracks.\” (I cringed a little reading the section that told about beavers in history).
Definition: a cheap and showy object of little or no use

I think I\’m going to participate in Wondrous Words Wednesdays from now on, if I find enough new words per week to make a post about it.