Wondrous Words Wednesday

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where you can share new words that you’ve encountered or spotlight words you love.

I found so many great new words while reading The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Creation!

1. "The ceiling was very low, with roots coming through, and everything had a genteel fade to it, the old lace and code-breaking machines, the anchors and heavy picture frames, the dinosaur bones and orreries." (12)

orrery - an apparatus showing the relative positions and motions of bodies in the solar system by balls moved by a clockwork

2. "In the midst of copper statues and fountains caked with verdigris rested three huge bathtubs." (58)

verdigris - a green or greenish-blue poisonous pigment resulting from the action of acetic acid on copper and consisting of one or more basic copper acetates

(I actually guessed this word had something to do with the color green just based on the root "verdi.")

3. "All traffic travels widdershins, September thought, giggling." (62)

widdershins - in a left-handed, wrong, or contrary direction

(This term gets referenced - and defined - later in the book, but I thought it was a great word! Also, a twitter friend of mine decided to start using it on the same day I found it in the book. That's quite a coincidence!)

4. "'The Changeling Recital at Dandytown Hall went off splendidly last week, featuring an orchestra of violins, oboes, one piano, a nickelstave, two tubas, a lorelei, and a full grummellphone section.'" (87)

lorelei - a siren of Germanic legend whose singing lures Rhine River boatmen to destruction on a reef

(Neither nickelstave nor grummellphone are in the dictionary, so I'm guessing they were made up. I ran into that A LOT in this book.)

5. "'My name is Doctor Fallow, and I am the Satrap of Autumn.'" (135)

satrap - the governor of a province in ancient Persia

6. "'Do you see an Order of the Green Kirtle on my chest?'" (166)

kirtle - a tunic or coat worn by men especially in the Middle Ages

7. "'What is an indirect dative reserved for things.'" (197)

dative - of, relating to, or being the grammatical case that marks typically the indirect object of a verb, the object of some prepositions, or a possessor

(Sadly, this is not the only grammatical term I've encountered recently that I didn't learn about in school!)

Those are the new words I learned this week! How about you?