Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Wondrous Words Wednesday-Jan. 27


Bermudaonion asks you to share new words that you have learned during your reading adventures in the last week. Feel free to join in the fun!

Here are some new words that I learned while reading Matrimony by Joshua Henkin:

Eviscerate:   to remove the entrails from; disembowel.

Here is how eviscerate was used on page 61:
...the Pocahontas Pinata hanging from a tree next to Thompson Hall, waiting for classes to end and the students to eviscerate it.

Enervation:  to deprive of force or strength; weaken.

Here is how enervation was used on page 74:
And Cynthia, her friend back home, whose mother endured what lay in wait for Mia's mother, the enervation and nausea, the wasting away, the hair falling out, the vomiting.

Pugilist:  a person who fights with the fists; a boxer, usually a professional.

Here is how pugilist was used on page 91:
The neighborhood extended south, where Julian was headed now, bent forward like a pugilist, taking on the weather.

Cuneiform: (I believe the following definition is correct for how it is used in this book)Being a character or characters formed by the arrangement of small wedge-shaped elements and used in ancient Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian writing.

Here is how cunieform is used on page 179:
It was filled with mistakes, no doubt, but it was a Japanese letter, written in a script that until recently had been no more familiar to her than cuneiform.


So did you learn any new words last week?

3 comments:

bermudaonion said...

Ooh, I don't even want to think about eviscerate! You found some great words! Thanks for sharing them today.

Margot said...

Glad you found so many great words this week. Have fun getting barmy at your wine tasting.

Lisa notes... said...

I ran across eviscerate not long ago myself and had to look it up. Good to see it again here as a memory jogger!