Wondrous Words Wednesday!

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Bermudaonion's Weblog where we share new (to us) words that we’ve encountered in our reading. Feel free to join in the fun (please do!) Be sure to leave a link to your post over at Bermudaonion's Weblog!

This word comes from The Swimming Pool by Holly LeCraw. It's one of those words I've heard before but forgot!

" I do", she had said. "I do need it." But her mother's face had not changed. That implacability.

1. Implacable {im-plak-uh-buh-l} -adj.
- not to be appeased, mollified or pacified; inexorable.

Inexorable (in-ek-ser-uh-buhl) -adj.
1. unyielding; unalterable
2. not to be persuaded, moved or affected by prayers or entreaties.


The next two words come from The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

"It was so humiliating for me to have to cook such loathsome dishes that when Monsieur de Broglie- the State Councilor on the first floor- intervened (an intervention he described to his wife as being "courteous but firm" whose only intention was to rid our communal habitat of such plebian effluvia), it came as an immense relief, one I concealed as best I could beneath an expression of reluctant compliance."

2. Effluvia {ih-floo-vee-uhm} - n. plural -vi-a (vee-uh)
1. A usually invisible emanation or exhalation, as of vapor or gas.
2. a) a byproduct or residue; waste
b)The odorous fumes given off by waste or decaying matter.
3. An impalpable emanation; an aura.
- adj. :
a slight or invisible exhalation or vapor, especially one that is noxious or disagreeable.


"It is an incunabulum," he says and toward my eyes, which I try to render as glassy as possible he directs the smug gaze of the propertied classes."

3. Incunabulum {in-kyoo-nab-yuh-luh-m} -noun
1. A book printed before 1501; an incunable.
2. An artifact of an early period.

Incunabula -plural
1. extant copies of books produced in the earliest stages (before 1501) of printing from movable type.
2. the earliest stages or first traces of anything.