Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Wondrous Words Wednesday! 10.6.10

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.

These first two words are from the website Save the Words:

"The whole nation bubulcitated for tickets to the Bon Jovi Concert."

1. Bubulcitate
: to act as a cowherd; to cry like a cowherd or cow boy.

"Despite being epalpebrate after that freak accidet, she still looks as beautiful as ever."

2. Epalpebrate -adj.
: Lacking eyebrows


These words are from Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

"The Johnny Gentle who stressed above all - simultaneously pleaded for and promised - an end to atomized Americans' fractious blaming of one another for our terrible internal troubles.". (p.383)

3. Atomize - verb
: to split into many sections, groups, factions etc.; fragmentize
: to reduce to fine particles or spray; to reduce to atoms
: to destroy (a target) by bombing esp. with an atomic bomb


"Within days he was punting 60 yards without a rush, practicing solo on an outside field with the Special Teams Assistant, a dreamy Gauloise-smoking man who invoked ideas of sky and flight and called Orin 'ephebe,' which a discreet phone call to his younger brother revealed not to be the insult Orin had feared it sounded like." (p. 292)

4. Ephebe -noun
: a young man, esp., an ephebus - a youth of ancient Greece just entering manhood or commencing training for full Athenian citizenship.

4 comments:

  1. I love the Save the Words website but haven't been there in a while. Thanks for reminding me. I also like your words from Infinite Jest. It gives me a little taste of the book.

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  2. Wow! I've learned something new!!

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  3. I LOL'd at epalpebrate. I wasn't expecting that.

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  4. I need to check out Save the Words - those are new words for me and I don't think I could pronounce either one of them. I'm guessing atomizer comes from atomize. Thanks for playing along!

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