~ ~ 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 and be sure to leave a link to your post over at Bermudaonion's Weblog.

These words are from The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon:

“Once they are in his power, he pulls out their eyes and takes them back to his lugubrious abode, a ghostly old conservatory lingering on the misty banks of the Seine.”

Lugubrious (adjective)
: mournful, dismal, or gloomy, especially in an affected, exaggerated, or unrelieved manner.

“It was obvious that, as well as books, incunabula, and all manner of arcane bibliography, Don Gustavo also collected statues, paintings and altar pieces, not to mention abundant fauna and flora.”
“Something about him reminded me of one of those figures from old-fashioned playing cards or the sort used by fortune-tellers, a print straight from the pages of an incunabulum: his presence was both funereal and incandescent, like a curse dressed in Sunday best.”

Incunabula (plural) incunabulum (singlr)
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.

This word is from Doctor Sleep by Stephen King:

“A cowling surrounded the locomotive on both sides, but he spied a footstool standing beneath one low eave of the Teenytown Station, carried it over, and stood on it."

Cowling (noun)
: a streamlined metal housing or removable covering for an engine, especially an aircraft engine, often part of or forming a continuous line with the fuselage or wing.