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:

• helpmeet: a wife, in a blatantly patriarchal biblical sense
• prate: to prattle or babble

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:
  • wayzgoose: a printmaking celebration!
  • vly [vlei]: seasonal lake

Posted on Friday, November 7th, 2025. Tags: word, words.