new words

I say books are a girl's best friend.

Yesterday the hubster came home bearing gifts. (Good man!)

Well, one gift, anyhow—which is plenty. It was a belated Christmas gift, something that had been on backorder since early December.

I am now the giddy owner of The Thinker’s Thesaurus by Peter E. Meltzer. This isn’t your typical Roget. No—the subtitle explains its haecceity (uniqueness): Sophisticated Alternatives to Common Words. This thesaurus gives ludic (playful) synonyms and piquant (interesting) phrases that aren’t found in a regular thesaurus.

Think of it as a Fancy Nancy book for grown-ups.

For example, who knew that foofaraw is another way to say that someone is making a fuss over a trivial matter?

And if you need a snazzy way to say that something is odd, The Thinker’s Thesaurus gives five entries:

odd (as in departing from the standard or norm) adj.: heteroclite
odd (as in eccentric) adj.: pixilated
odd (as in unconventional) adj.: outré
odd (as in perplexing) adj.: quisquous
odd (as in unusual) adj.: selcouth

So true, Sara Groves—there are different kinds of happy.

Who knew the word odd had so many variants?

See? This book makes the perfect gift—it’s ratiocinative (sensible), frutuous (fruitful, productive), and perdurable (lasting, durable).

For a word lover like me, it also gives hours of felicific reading.

In case your interest has been piqued, the book has a subscription service so you can register to receive a synonym-a-day. How great is that?!

Happy wordsmithing to you.

Here at Filling My Patch of Sky, words are like dear friends. And I’ve just discovered a few new ones within the pages of Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild—words that I had not encountered before (at least, not that I remember!).

Let me introduce you:

contumacious | adjective | 1583
stubbornly disobedient : rebellious
found on page 11: “Thompson, Samel, and Swanson, however, are contumacious Alaskans with special fondness for driving motor vehicles where motor vehicles aren’t really designed to be driven.”

opprobrium | noun | Latin, 1656
1: something that brings disgrace
2 a: public disgrace or ill fame that follows from conduct considered grossly wrong or vicious | 2 b: contempt, reproach
found on page 70: “The article about McCandless in Outside generated a large volume of mail, and not a few of the letters heaped opprobrium on McCandless . . .”

eremite | noun | Middle English,13th century
hermit; especially : a religious recluse
found on page 73: “Edward Hoagland observed that Alaska is ‘not the best site in the world for eremitic experiments or peace-love theatrics.'”

Now that you’ve been introduced, be sure to invite them out once in a while.

For more word-related discoveries, visit wordlily.