Vocabulary Harvest
I haven’t been diligent about recording new words in the past couple months, but here’s a batch of goodies from books I read late last year and earlier this year.
Him, by Geoff Ryman
I’m not including a lot of Greek and Hebrew terms that appeared in the book, except for a few that occur most frequently or as modern loanwords.
- amphora: ceramic jugs
- kohl: eyeliner
- spatchcocked: splayed, as a bird for cooking; awkwardly exposed
- proseuche: a prayer or place for prayer
- peroration: climax of a speech or sermon
- ekclesia [ecclesia]: the church, as a political structure
It Can’t Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis
- lorn: forlorn
- parvenu: newly rich or powerful
- tumbril: a cart [for prisoners]; a paddy wagon
- exiguous: small or scanty
New Adventures in Space Opera, edited by Jonathan Strahan
From Morrigan in the Sunglare by Seth Dickinson:
- threnody: elegy
- eudaimonia: well-being
From A Voyage to Queensthroat by Anya Johanna DeNiro:
- caravel: a type of sailing ship
- lapidation: execution by stoning
New Edge Sword & Sorcery #3, edited by Oliver Brackenbury
From the flash fiction:
- Sister Soldier, by R. L. Summerling:
- purulent: containing or consisting of pus (gross!)
- Against the Witch-Prince of Emdal, by W. O. Balmer
- brume: mist or fog
- High Water, by James Estes:
- orison: prayer
From Jirel and the Mirror of Truth, by Molly Tanzer
- absonant: discordant; not consonant
- compeer: one of equal rank; a peer
- mews: stables or surrounding places
- drugget: woolly rug; used figuratively to describe fallen leaves
- varlet: a rascal or scoundrel
- picaroon: a pirate
- murine: like a rat or mouse
The Player of Games, by Iain M. Banks
- conspectus: a summary
- machicolated: constructed with defensive portals below the battlements
Twelve Trees, by Daniel Lewis
- entrepôt: trading post
- griot: storyteller; bearer of an oral tradition
- congener: member of the same genus; one level up the taxonomic tree from the more familiar term (to me) conspecific, which denotes a member of the same species
Blacks on John Brown, edited by Benjamin Quarles
From the excerpt of John Brown—Hero and Martyr by George Washington Williams:
- animadverted: made a critical remark
- expiated: forgave or made amends
From the excerpt of a December 5, 1909 address by Francis J. Grimké:
Various
- From Playing with Popups, by Helen Hiebert:
- volvelle: a papercraft spinny thing
- From Mercy of Gods by James S. A. Corey:
- moiety: kinship group; here, used to subjugated divisions of an imperial society
- From Battle of the Nine Waters by Dariel R. A. Quiogue in New Edge Sword & Sorcery #4:
- quirt: a small whip
- From James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice Sheldon, by Julie Phillips:
- rodomontade: boastful rhetoric; braggadocio
- Miscellaneous: