vocabulary lessons: The Devil in the White City

Posted on July 3, 2011 by pagesofjulia

It’s time for more vocabulary lessons! The Devil in the White City offered a wealth of learning opportunities for me.

A shot tower is “a tower designed for the production of shot balls by freefall of molten lead, which is then caught in a water basin.” It’s used in a list of miscellaneous structures in a discussion of the design of the fairgrounds.

Virga is “an observable streak or shaft of precipitation that falls from a cloud but evaporates before reaching the ground,” as in “strong gusts of wind buffeted the train, and ghostly virga of ice followed it through the night” (page 78).

Grip-cars are defined in the book itself: they get their name “for the way their operators attached them to an ever-running cable under the street” (page 13). How interesting; I didn’t know about this kind of streetcar, and I looked for a picture:

(thanks to these guys for the photo.)

According to context clues (it’s used several times), I concluded that an alienist must be a period term for psychologist, and it looks like I was right.

And here’s one I really like: a sirocco is “a Mediterranean wind that comes from the Sahara and reaches hurricane speeds in North Africa and Southern Europe.” It’s used on page 113: “In the hearth at the north wall a large fire cracked and lisped, flushing the room with a dry sirocco that caused frozen skin to tingle.” What a neat word for such a specific concept.

Some of these felt vaguely like a review; but I still had to look up calumny: “a misrepresentation intended to harm another’s reputation” and meretricious: “tawdrily and falsely attractive.”

Mucid was entirely new to me, but creepily appropriate, almost an onomatopoeia. It means “Musty; moldy; slimy; mucous.”

In addition, I looked up a number of names, of celebrities of the times. Some I knew and needed to know better; some were unknown to me.

This book was rich with vocabulary-learning opportunities. Have you learned anything new from your reading lately?

Filed under: musings | Tagged: | 1 Comment »

vocabulary lessons: South Texas Tales

Posted on June 8, 2011 by pagesofjulia

I thought I’d share a few more words I was inspired to look up by my recent read: a Mexican-American collection of short stories.

Cuatro Milpas is both the name of a cantina (bar) and the bartender/owner’s favorite song. Apparently a milpa is “a small field in Mexico or Central America that is cleared from the forest, cropped for a few seasons, and abandoned for a fresh clearing.”

anaphora: “a rhetorical term for the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses.” From the story Dona Porfiria Comes Calling, “Their father was a prolific reader and whenever he spoke to them using anaphora, they knew from past experience that they were doomed.”

Shibboleth: “any distinguishing practice that is indicative of one’s social or regional origin.” In its usage in the story by the same name, the Shibboleth (capitalized in the story, but this does not appear to always be the case) is basically a secret handshake.

menso: “someone who is stupid and/or annoying.” Used in dialog: “Hey! Jou’re not so ‘Mr. high and mighty’ now, eh rich boy? Jou’re daddy’s not aroun’ here, menso!” I like this phonetic expression of accents, a la Twain in Huck Finn and so many more (although I believe Twain was the first).

dècimas: defined in the story itself. Let me just share with you a short passage:

Sebastian remembered the dècimas and their complicated forty lines. A man would challenge another to a verbal duel by nailing a quatrain to the front door or a fence post. The challenged had to answer within a week by producing a complicated forty line poem with four ten line stanzas. Not only that, but the poem had to have a strict octosyllabic beat with an ‘abbaaccdde’ rhyme scheme. Many a man had tried and failed to meet the verbal challenge, but the CÌsneros men were fine ‘dècimeros’ and always relished the competition.

Isn’t that an awfully cool tradition? And so literary! I would be very impressed to observe one of these challenges being met.

merienda: context clues tell me that this is something like a late-afternoon meal of dessert. In my interwebs-searching for a definition, I found a source of information that I especially appreciated. (You may observe that I vary my sources: Wikipedia, About.com, online dictionaries including the urbandictionary.com, or whatever seems most appropriate to my need.) I found a blog that nailed this one, in a surprisingly close-to-home post about eating in the Med Center, where I work. Dr. Ricky defines the term for me:

Although loosely translated to mean snack, merienda cuisine is markedly different from what Americans consider snacks (which appear to me as extended desserts). They aren’t simply sweet items meant to provide a quick spike of blood sugar – merienda foods are proper filling small versions of regular meals, more often savory than sweet.

…and so on, discussing the food he (I think it’s a he? I could be wrong) is accustomed to seeing at meriendas in different countries.

These little cultural learning moments were great fun for me. Have you learned any new words lately?

Filed under: musings | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

vocabulary lessons: The Great Night

Posted on June 4, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Sometimes I learn a lot of new words from a book. For bookmarks, I don’t use pretty bits that were designed for use as bookmarks; I use scraps of paper (usually, something that’s been printed on one side and discarded, which I then cut into quarter-pages for just this purpose). I try to carry a pen, and I take notes on the bookmark about questions I have, or passages I might want to come back to later. This way, I can look up that reference to a book, movie, or person I wasn’t familiar with; I can quote a passage in a blog post; or I can look up the meaning of unfamiliar words and go back and reread the sentence with a new understanding.

The Great Night was full of learning opportunities – so much so, that I thought I’d share them here.

Monchhichi – okay, maybe everyone knew this one but me. Apparently a Monchhichi doll is a Japanese stuffed monkey with a certain “look” to it, thus the usage: “…might… run into a girl with a Monchhichi hairdo who could demonstrate that it didn’t matter at all…”

cosmesis – the preservation, restoration, or bestowing of bodily beauty. (very appropriate for fairy-land?) “So she did magic instead, scene by scene, working a sort of dual cosmesis upon the players and the play…”

irenic – tending to promote peace or reconciliation; peaceful or conciliatory. “…her wild spasms contrasting with the irenic strains of the music.”

capacitous – having large or exemplary capacity. “How odd, she thought, and how horrible to see them still there, slosh full of tears and regret, but no more capacitous, and perhaps not as full, as her own.”

These were all so very new to me! (And I had to look up the movie Soylent Green, too. Fairly integral to the plot, actually.) I love learning while I read. Have you spotted any new words lately?

Filed under: musings | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

« Previous Page