Wondrous Words Wednesday
Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where we share new (to us) words that we’ve encountered in our reading. Feel free to join in the fun.
The first two new words I came across this week are from The Girl She Used to Be by David Cristofano.
1. chimerical – “And all the chimerical, fancy detail work cannot change the predestined outcome of another cycle through the system.”
Chimerical means existing only as the product of unchecked imagination.
2. recidivism – “And the recidivism rate for criminals that went into the program is not even a tenth of what it is for people who get rehabilitated in prison.”
Recidivism is the tendency to relapse into a previous condition or mode of behavior.
The next two words came from The Red Leather Diary by Lily Koppel.
3. aigrettes – “Florence tried on walking hats, zany caps, aviator’s helmets, and formal crêpe designs with feathers, jeweled aigrettes, or ‘tailored’ flowers with silk petals.”
An aigrette is a spray of feathers for the head.
4. exegesis – “Florence and her fellow M. A. candidates were assigned a full biographical exegesis on an obscure literary figure for their thesis”
An exegesis is an explanation of or critical interpretation of a text.
What new words have you discovered lately?
Bermudaonion's Weblog 
Good ones! I didn’t know a few of these either.
Not too sure I could work exegesis into a conversation but it might be fun to try. My wondrous words are Here
The only one of your words I knew was recidivism (again because it’s a fairly commonly used French word). I’d heard a couple of the others but wouldn’t have been able to define them.
My words are here:
http://shereadsandreads.blogspot.com/2009/03/wondrous-words-wednesday-march-25.html
Here’s my list: http://wordlily.wordpress.com/2009/03/25/words-from-my-reading-3/
Good ones! I was familiar with recidivism, but the others were new.
My words are here.
I’ve had to look up both aigrettes and exegesis in the past. Exegesis is one of those words that I’d never seen before, and then as soon as I looked it up, I started seeing it everywhere.
The book review I posted today (The Blackest Bird by Joel Rose) had a ton of vocab words.
I never heard of aigrettes before, but the other words are (vaguely) familiar to me. I found some new gardening words this week, here they are.
Great words. I managed to find a word this week that wasn’t even in the dictionary. I had to do some digging. It is posted here:
http://ravndahl.blogspot.com/2009/03/wondrous-words-wednesday.html
I am always happy if I know one of the words. This week I know…and have actually used two… recidivism and exegesis. So two I feel twice as smart as usual!! 😉
Love the word chimerical. It was the only one I knew 🙂
I think I’d look just smashing with an aigrette, don’t you??
My list is HERE
All new words to me.
My words are here
I wish you could be at the Guernsey discussion too! We would have so much fun.
ah, but can you work a few of these into the SAME sentence? Exegesis sure sounds like a show-off word to me.
I had a word for this week, but I can’t find the piece of paper where I wrote it down! Argh…
I *just* found your wonderful little meme, and couldn’t resist the urge to play along
Happy Reading, everybody!
This is a fun meme! I never comment, and heaven forbid I find the time to do it, but I love to read ’em!
& I have an award for you. =)
aigrettes must be French. figures it would have to do with fashion 🙂
Someday I’m going to start keeping a vocab. notebook, again, but it’s just not happening. I knew three of these words! Aigrette is not something I can see myself using in everyday conversation. 🙂