Pagesofjulia's Blog

Leave it to an author as well-read as Josh Hanagarne to stump me several times over! I keep a piece of scratch paper as a bookmark, one sheet faithfully dedicated to each book, for keeping notes: page numbers for referral or quotation, words to look up, thoughts that belong in my review. If I have to look up more than 1-3 words in a book of standard length, that book often finds its way into a “vocabulary lessons” post. Here are the words that I learned from The World’s Strongest Librarian.

revenant: “one that returns after death or a long absence.” As used, a great way to poke fun at the ultra-serious character in question.

elided: “to suppress or alter (as a vowel or syllable) by elision” (a prime example of the crime of using the word in its own definition! shame on you, Merriam-Webster) or “to strike out (as a written word).” Not to be confused, I suppose, with redact, a term I was more familiar with and which did come up as a “related word.”

D and C: a most unpleasant-sounding surgery performed for, in this case, a very sad condition.

fontanelle: that soft spot on a baby’s head that you have to be careful of until the skull zips up properly. I am not a person well-versed in babies, in case you couldn’t tell. Used here in a metaphoric sense which I found quite effective, and topical.

Bonus: I went out the other night for beers with a girlfriend who also works in health care, and she dropped one on me that I’d never heard before. Because I’m a logophile, I had to go look it up right away! Lisa says that perseverate is word mostly used in health care; and the definition, to “repeat a response after the cessation of the original stimulus,” does fit with Lisa’s specialty in treating neurological conditions. There you go – learn something every day, even at the local pub. Thanks Lisa!

Sorry to say, folks, that The World’s Strongest Librarian will not be released for some time (May 2, last I saw). But in the meantime, you can check out Josh’s blog.

And if you’re interested – you can see a few more “vocabulary lessons” posts here.

Filed under: musings | Tagged: reading as education, vocabulary | 3 Comments »

For a man who writes evocatively of nose picking, armpit scratching, hard drinking, and crude womanizing, Edward Abbey can be surprisingly erudite and wordy. His more informed readers will note, however, that he held a master’s degree in philosophy, and enjoyed both a Fulbright Scholarship at Edinburgh University and a Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellowship at Standford.

In my recent reading of his second novel, The Brave Cowboy, I had to look up no fewer than 10 words, ranging from unfamiliar to entirely unknown to me. Perhaps you will find some new ones here, as well!

bartizan: “a small structure (as a turret) projecting from a building and serving especially for lookout or defense.”

scurf: “Scaly or shredded dry skin, such as dandruff.” Ewww! Leave it to Abbey. It was more or less clear, in context, what this word referred to; but I initially thought perhaps it was one he’d made up. Not so.

corundum: “a very hard mineral that consists of aluminum oxide occurring in massive and crystalline forms, that can be synthesized, and that is used for gemstones (as ruby and sapphire) and as an abrasive.” The first of several geological terms, not very surprisingly.

glister: As I’d suspected, a sort of blending of ‘glisten’ and ‘glitter’, but not one Abbey made up, as I’d also suspected (like ‘scurf’, above).

carnotite: “a yellow to greenish-yellow mineral consisting of a radioactive hydrous vanadate of uranium and potassium that is a source of radium and uranium.” Extra points if you go look up ‘vanadate’…

cuate: I am mostly confident following the little bits of Spanish Abbey uses, having grown up in a border state myself; but I had to check on cuate. As suggested in context, it’s another way to say “guy, buddy, pal.”

eschatology: I began to wrinkle my nose because of the similarity to scatology, but no. “A branch of theology concerned with the final events in the history of the world or of humankind.” A philosopher master’s, I said.

hosanna: “used as a cry of acclamation and adoration.”

passacaglia: “an instrumental musical composition consisting of variations usually on a ground bass in moderately slow triple time.”

tamarisk: “any of a genus (Tamarix of the family Tamaricaceae, the tamarisk family) of chiefly Old World desert shrubs and trees having tiny narrow leaves and masses of minute flowers with five stamens and a one-celled ovary —called also salt cedar.” To which I am tempted to grumble, why not just call it salt cedar?

I’m always happy to learn new words. Thanks, Ed.

You can see a few more “vocabulary lessons” posts here.

Filed under: musings | Tagged: reading as education, vocabulary | 2 Comments »

One of the things that caught my attention while reading Turn of Mind, about a woman with dementia, was Dr. White’s clarity regarding medical terms and concepts. Get her talking clinically, and she’s 100%. I am very fortunate to have no experience with Alzheimer’s and its effects in my own personal life, so I know relatively little. I found it really interesting what parts of her life were easily and consistently accessed (work-related) and what regularly escaped her (family and friends). At any rate, Dr. White taught me some new medical terms:

brachycephalic: having a short broad head with a cephalic index of over 80 (read more here)

hemangioma: an abnormal buildup of blood vessels in the skin or internal organs. In this case, she’s talking about a birthmark that helps her recognize one of the caregivers in her new “home.”

And also gave me some artists to look up. She says of her husband, “our eclectic tastes in art amused the people around us,” which immediately had me looking up the artists named:

Gorky (google images here),

Rauschenberg (which of course had me erroneously thinking of Rorschach tests – does anyone else think the inkblots always look like ovaries?? what does that say about me?) (google images here), and finally

Dubuffet (google images here). And here is where I was surprised and excited: I know this guy’s work! The sculpture in downtown Houston that I grew up climbing all over is immediately recognizable as a Dubuffet, and sure enough, there he is. (Images here.) I feel certain my parents have a picture somewhere of toddler-sized me climbing into its upper nooks after a Jingle Bell Run in the 1980′s or some such. Isn’t it interesting where we find connections?

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