So here is the list of words gleaned from Calpurnia Tate. Remember that this book falls into juvenile fiction and yet it had half a dozen words a person of middling intelligence had never seen before. It makes me giddy just thinking about it.
pestiferous: adj; mischievious, troublesome or annoying
"While the rest of the family tossed and dozed, I secretly made my way to the San Marcos River bank and enjoyed a daily interlude of no school, no pestiferous brothers, and no Mother." pg 3
shagreen: n; an untanned leather with a granular surface, prepared from the hide of horse, shark or seal.
"There was a large oak desk covered in intriguing oddities: a blown ostrich egg on a carved wooden stand, a microscope nesting in a shagreen leather case, ..." pg 19
aborning: in birth; before being carried out
"I knew another one was aborning deep within me, and there wasn't much I could do about it." (as in a bad case of the hiccups...) pg. 58
tumbrel: n; one of the carts used during the French revolution to convey victims to the guillotine.
"I was the condemned young aristocat holding my head high in the tumbrel." pg 223
spleen: n; ill humour, peevish temper or spite
"We four children stayed out of their way and continued to vent our group spleen amonst ourselves, muttering about the unfairness of it all." pg. 237
foofaraw: n; a great fuss about something insignificant
"Then of course there followed a great foofaraw about getting me to my feet and slapping the grass off me and getting me a lemonade and putting me into a borrowed rig to get me home." pg. 287
So, how many did you know?
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1 comment:
Only the last one did I know but I didn't know how to spell it!
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