Wondrous Words Wednesday!

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Bermudaonion's Weblog where we share new words previously unknown to us that we have encountered in our reading. Feel free to join in the fun , just leave your link over at Bermudaonion's Weblog!

The first word comes from In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson

1. antipodean (adj. or noun) - "So there is a certain sense of achievement in just arriving in Australia - a pleasure and satisfaction to be able to step from the airport terminal into dazzling, antipodean sunshine and realize all your many atoms, so recently missing and unaccounted for, have been reassembled in an approximately normal manner..."

antipode means the parts of the earth diametrically opposite —usually used in plural —often used of Australia and New Zealand as contrasted to the western hemisphere;

the exact opposite or contrary

The following two words come from The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly.

1. Colocation (noun) - "The web hosting center with all of the designers and operators was on the surface as well. The high-security colocation farm was below the surface in the so-called bunker."

Colocate means to locate or be located in jointly or together, as two or more groups, or the like; share or designate to share the same place.

The interesting thing about this is that Merriam-Webster on-line didn't have colocation or colocate (I used dictionary.com) but it did have collocation (with 2 "ll"s) defined as the act or result of placing or arranging together; specifically : a noticeable arrangement or conjoining of linguistic elements (as words).

2. abasiophilia - "It even has a name. It's called abasiophilia. A psychosexual fascination with leg braces.

This term wasn't in Merriam-Webster or Dictionary.com so I went to Wikipedia which defined abasiophilia as is a psychosexual attraction to people with impaired mobility, especially those who use orthopaedic appliances such as leg braces, orthopedic casts or wheelchairs. The term abasiophilia was first used by John Money of the Johns Hopkins University in a paper on paraphilias in 1990.

This is very interesting to me and a little disturbing. The rare bone and endocrine disease I have, which is called McCune-Albright's Syndrome has caused me to need many, many surgeries and, as a result, I have been in numerous orthopedic casts, worn long leg braces many times and have used a wheelchair and crutches for mobility my entire life. Fortunately, I have never met anyone with abasiophilia or been the subject of fascination or obsession by anyone with it. Whew! LOL