Friday, January 30, 2009

New Words

I finally finished my first book of this year, The Emperor's Children. I have to agree, at least partially, with one of the customer's reviews on Amazon: "the author likes very long sentences; many paragraphs are absolutely incomprehensible. Are we to be impressed with the overuse of commas and dependent clauses so that it often takes two or three readings to render a sentence understandable?" By D. West "Bones

I almost set it aside numerous times because of that very thing. It's tiring. However, by the middle of the book, and it's a somewhat long one (479 pgs.), it started to get interesting. By the end, she had my attention.

That being said, what I really liked about the book was the number of new words I had to look up! As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I love words! Here's some of the new ones I had to look up. Please, no laughing if you already know what they mean! Oh, go ahead and laugh! Life is short!

Affianced [uh-fahy-uhnst] –adjective
betrothed; engaged.

Akimbo [uh-kim-boh] –adjective, adverb
with hand on hip and elbow bent outward: to stand with arms akimbo.

Corollary [kawr-uh-ler-ee] –noun, plural -lar⋅ies.
1. Mathematics. a proposition that is incidentally proved in proving another proposition.
2. an immediate consequence or easily drawn conclusion.
3. a natural consequence or result.

Excrescence [ik-skres-uhns] –noun
1. an abnormal outgrowth, usually harmless, on an animal or vegetable body.
2. a normal outgrowth, as hair or horns.
3. any disfiguring addition.
4. abnormal growth or increase.

Uxorious [uhk-sawr-ee-uhs] –adjective
doting upon, foolishly fond of, or affectionately submissive toward one's wife.

Insalubrious [in-suh-loo-bree-uhs]–adjective
unfavorable to health; unwholesome.

So now I can start "The Hour I First Believed" by one of my very favorite authors, Wally Lamb!!!!!!

3 comments:

amuse me said...

I'll be curious to hear what you think of Lamb's book. I started reading his first one and am intrigued.

Scriptor Senex said...

Uxorious sounds such a good word - then I read the meaning. Don't mind doting upon her but don't want to be too submissive!
Think I'll pinch it for my Word blog some time, thanks.

Anonymous said...

I love words too, I keep a dictionary next to my bed so I can look up words!

Flora & Fauna

Books I have known & loved

  • Life of Pi
  • A Hundred Years of Solitude
  • Kite Runner
  • The Way the Crow Flies
  • Fall on Your Knees
  • Poisonwood Bible
  • East of Eden
  • Shantaram
  • I Know This Much is True

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