Wondrous Words Wednesday

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where we share new (to us) words that we’ve encountered in our reading.  If you want to play along, grab the button, and join the fun!  (Don’t forget to leave a link in the comments if you’re participating.)  All of my words this week came from The Glass Room by Simon Mawer.

1. refulgent – “It had become a palace of light, light bouncing off the chrome pillars, light refulgent on the walls, light glistening on the dew on the garden, light reverberating from the glass.”

Refulgence means to shine brightly.

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2. ineluctably – “Vienna was a city of two million people and his presence in the Leopoldstadt quarter was merely transitory; yet as the taxi cab drove away from the station, there ineluctably, was the great wheel, the Riesenrad, turning slowly in the cool autumnal air above their heads.”

Ineluctable has two meanings – to struggle or wrestle;  not to be avoided, changed or resisted.  In this case, the second meaning is appropriate.

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3. fricatives– “The menacing fricatives of the word Geschlechtsverkehr circle the table.”

A fricative is a consonant characterized by frictional passage of the expired breath through a narrowing at some point in the vocal tract.

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What new words have you encountered lately?