Wondrous Words Wednesday June 22, 2016

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where you can share new words that you’ve encountered or spotlight words you love. Feel free to get creative! If you want to play along, grab the button at Kathy's blog, write a post and come back and add your link to Mr. Linky!

My words today come from Broad Influence: How Women Are changing the Way America Works by Jay Newton-Small.

"One of the oldest boys' clubs in the country resides in the West Wing of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, a bastion of male power so obdurate that is has been among the slowest to open to women."

obdurate:  adjective

    : refusing to do what other people want: not willing to change your opinion or the way you do something. 

I feel like I should have known this word. It reminds me of obstinate, which also means refusing to change your behavior or ideas. 


Speaking of the 20 women in the Senate in the 2012-13 session -

"The women were hardly monolithic. They ranged in ages between 45 - 80." 

monolithic: adjective

  : constituting a massive undifferentiated and often rigid whole
  : exhibiting or characterized by often rigidly fixed uniformity 

What wondrous words did you find this week? 


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Wondrous Words Wednesday 6-8-16

Kathy at Bermuda Onion hosts Wondrous Words Wednesday. A chance to highlight words you find while reading or occasionally by listening. Share your words then link up with Kathy's blog so we can all learn a new wondrous word.

This week I was neglectful in taking note of words while reading. I was so focused on finally finishing a book that I just soldiered on.  So I will check out my Word of the Day email from Miriam Webster. 

ululate - verb    

: howl or wail 

I remember seeing this word and even looking it up in the past. But I did not remember it. So I guess a refresher is in order. 

Two examples from the email. 

"Millions of pop culture devotees weep and ululate over the death of David Bowie. His passing is noteworthy, given his significant celebrity profile, but I shall miss [journalist] George Jonas' contributions more." — Randall Bell, letter in The National Post (Canada), 13 Jan. 2016   "They talked loud in their language, and together they sounded like mourners ululating." — Sefi Atta, Everything Good Will Come, 2005 (2008)

foozle - verb   

to manage or play akwardly,  bungle

Examples from the email:

After the receiver foozled the catch, the kicking team recovered the ball at the opponent's 10-yard line.   "He foozled a short putt on the 72nd green at Southern Hills in Tulsa that would've won him the 2001 Open, then played solidly in a Monday playoff and defeated Mark Brooks for the title." — Gary Van Sickle, Golf.com, 30 July 2015

I am going to have to remember this one. I am sure I will have ample opportunity to use it in the upcoming football season. Hopefully, not when my favorite team has the ball!

Did you find any wondrous words this week?

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Wondrous Words Wednesday 3/2/16

1. 
   

 Kathy at Bermuda Onion hosts Wondrous Words Wednesday. It is a place to share new and wondrous words you found while reading or listening. Or maybe just words you want to highlight. 

1. 
   
2. These words were found while reading The Liar's Club by Mary Karr. There were lots of unusual probably regional words. Ms. Karr writes from her heart and from her gut. I read the phrase while reading in bed one night, and did not make note of the page number. I cannot find the exact quote now. I had heard the word "pernicious anemia" but that did not really help me define it. 

1. pernicious fruit
2. causing great harm or damage often in a way that is not easily seen or noticed
3. highly injurious or destructive :  deadly
4. 2archaic :  wicked

axiomatically - adverb                             pg 311   The Liar's club

"Few born liars ever intentionally embark in truth's direction, even those who believe that such a journey might axiomatically set them free." 

obviously true

1. taken for granted:  self-evident axiomatic (an axiomatic truth)

2:  based on or involving an axiom or system of axioms (an axiomatic set theory)

ax·i·om·at·i·cal·ly       adverb



Did you find any wondrous words lately?




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Wondrous Words Wednesday - 2/24/16

Kathy at Bermudaonion's Weblog hosts this weekly meme where you can share new words you've encountered or spotlight words you love. If you want to play along, write a post then go to Kathy's blog to link your post.


These words were found in the first few pages of The Liar's Club by Mary Karr. It is not a read for the faint of heart. It is gritty, unforgettable and the real deal.



"My eyes were belt-level with his service revolver and a small leather sap that even then must have been illegal in the state of Texas."

sap - noun

I could not find this word in any online dictionary, but I googled it and this is what I found:

The SAP is a blunt weapon, a self-defense weapon. You just put it in your hand and then strike a target with the head of it. Typical carriers would be prison guards, and police. Police sometimes would have PD stamped into the base of the head on the leather.
They come in different weights and lengths.
While a blackjack has a coiled spring, the SAP has a long piece of metal, flexible, and sometimes with a small, metal ball at the head.

The head is wider, but shorter than the handle. Often, there is a strap, on the handle end, to make it easier to hold on to the SAP.


"At some point the talk got heated, and Paolo called Mother a strumpet, for which Daddy was said to have stomped a serious mud-hole in Paolo's a_ _. "

strumpet - noun dated

a prostitute or promiscuous woman

This from the Urban Dictionary, among many other more graphic examples.

first used by Shakespeare to describe loose women - "Thou art a strumpet"


What interesting or wondrous words did you find this week?


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Wondrous Words Wednesday - Emma

I am joining Kathy at BermudaOnion's Weblog to share words I found while reading this week. If you want to join us, share some words then link up at Kathy's blog.

I found these words while slogging through Emma by Jane Austen.



illiberal

"Those who can barely live, and who live perforce in a very small, and generally very inferior society, may very well be illiberal and cross."

not allowing people to think and act as they choose: not liberal


carpet-work

"If I draw less, I shall read more; if I give up music, I shall take up carpet-work"

I could not find a definition of carpet-work when I searched the internet, but I think if may be like embroidery or needlepoint.  I understood it to mean a way to keep herself busy if she ended up being an old maid.



stomacher

"... and if she does but send her aunt the pattern of a stomacher, or knit a pair of garters for her grandmother, one hears of nothing else for a month.

the center front section of a waist or underwaist,  or a usually heavily embroidered or jeweled separate piece for the center front of a bodice worn by men and women in the 15th and 16th centuries and later by women only

A close up of a probable hand embroidered stomacher

A 16th Century version of a stomacher in a dress

A modern version 

 Both the 16th-century version and the modern version show a lot of  decolletage.


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Wondrous Words Wednesday 1-13-16

Kathy at Bermuda Onion hosts this weekly meme and gives us a chance to celebrate words we encounter while reading or elsewhere. Join us by posting about some favorite words and then linking up at Kathy's blog.

livelihood - noun

simple definition: a way of earning money in order to live

or: 1) means of support or subsistence
      2)  obsolete:  the quality or state of being lively.

When I encountered this word while reading Take Me With You, I knew what it meant. But the author used it a different way. Discussing climbing:

  "It's my livelihood, August."
   " No, it isn't."
   "How can you say that? You think I don't know my own livelihood?"

The discussion continues with the adult suggesting that the young man's love of climbing is his raison d'etre. His reason for existence.

Ten pages later I came across a word that I had never heard before.

abseil - verb

  August wondered if Seth could give up and abseil down if he didn't want to go on. 

from Wikipedia:
"abseiling from German  abseilen, meaning "to rope down", also called rappelling, is the controlled descent of a vertical drop, such as a rock face, using a rope."

My son and daughter-in-law are climbers and I know the word rappel. So I learned something new this week. And that is what Wondrous Words Wednesday is all about.


Have a great rest of the week.
Stay Busy and Stay Happy

Wondrous Words Wednesday 12/2/15

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where you can share new words that you’ve encountered or spotlight words you love. Feel free to get creative! If you want to play along, write a post then go to Kathy's blog, BermudaOnion's Weblog and link up.

I came across this word while reading the blurb and intro from Laurel-Rain Snow's post about The Guest Room by Chris Bohjalian.
What she does not expect is this: bacchanalian drunkenness, her husband sharing a dangerously intimate moment in the guest room, and two women stabbing and killing their Russian bodyguards before driving off into the night.

I was pretty sure I understood the word as used in the sentence , but I was unfamiliar with the word. So I went to my Merriam Webster online dictionary.

bacchanalia - noun : A Roman of festival of Bacchus celebrated with dancing, song and revelry and as an adjective.   bacchanalian . The dictionary also defines this word as orgy 2 and orgy 3. I probably don't need to go into the definitions of this word. Either 2 or 3.  

Another word from my MW Word of the Day: from November 27th  -  

Minatory  - adj.        having a menacing quality. 

In the moonlight, the twisted winter trees took on a particularly baleful and minatory appearance.

Did you find any extra special words this week? 

Stay Busy and Stay Happy