Wondrous Words Wednesday!

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Bermudaonion's Weblog where we share 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.

The following word comes from The Grief of Others by Leah Hager Cohen


" That was how it had been ever since the diagnosis: a pretense of animosity had grown between them, a kind of ongoing, low-level dyspepsia."


1. Dyspepsia
: deranged or impaired digestion; indigestion




" At times her appearance provided a not unpleasant diversion or even comic relief, but right now, coupled with her desire to express bathetic condolences, it was the last thing John wanted to deal with.


2. Bathos
: insincere pathos; sentimentality; mawkishness
: triteness or triviality in style


" He leaned in ostentatiously to eye the meniscus of John's glass, then rose from the bar stool. "


3. Meniscus
: the curved surface at the top of a column of liquid





These next few words are from Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh


" Although not far, the distance was too great for Hukam Singh to cover on foot, for he had been wounded in the leg while serving as a sepoy in a British regiment. "


4. Sepoy
: (formerly, in India) a native soldier, usually an infantryman, in the service of Europeans, especially of the British.




" At the factory's ghat on the Ganga, a one-masted pateli barge could be seen, flying the pennant of the English East India Company. "


5. Ghat
: a wide set of steps descending to a river, especially a river used for bathing.




" Once his meal had been wrapped and packed, she broke off to pay a quick visit to her shrine room: later, after she's bathed and changed, Deeti would do a proper puja with flowers and offerings; now, being clothed still in her night-time sari, she merely stopped at the door, to join he hands in a brief genuflection. "


6. Puja (Hinduism)
:the worship of a particular god.