Wondrous Words Wednesday! 9.15.10

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.

My first word is from Lush Life by Richard Price:

"One of the few remaining pre-tenement rookeries in the city, 24 East Broadway was squat and rambling, on a block filled with similarly ancient and amorphous buildings, the door to the street at this late hour kept open via a strip of duct tape blocking the lock."

1. Rookery (-ies) -noun
:an over- crowded tenement house often occupied by criminals and prostitutes as well as poor people and characterized by poor construction and little or no sanitation


The following words are from Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace:

"It's possibly odd that the leptosomatic Mario I., so damaged he can't even grip a stick, much less flail at a moving ball with one, is the one kid at E. T. A. (Enfield Tennis Academy) whose company Schtitt seeks out, is in fact pretty much the one person with whom Schtitt speaks candidly, lets his pedagogical hair down.".

2. Leptosomatic -adj.
:Having a slender, light or thin body


"Les Assassins' M. Fortier and M. Broullime and some others of his comrades-on-wheels believed Remy Marathe to be eidetic, near-perfect in recall and detail."

3. Eidetic -adj.
:of, pertaining to, or constituting visual imagery vividly experienced and readily reproducible with great accuracy and in great detail; involving extraordinarily accurate and vivid recall