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 my nifty Word-a-Day calendar.

1. pilgarlic – “Anton was dismissed as an old pilgarlic until he figured out a way to save the villager’s crops from a plague of locusts.”

Pilgarlic has several meanings: a bald head or a bald-headed man is the most common.  In this sentence, though, it means a man looked upon with humorous contempt or mock pity.  Pilgarlic come from the supposed resemblance between a bald head and peeled garlic – “pilled garlic” in British dialect.

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2. koine – “Inevitably, various koines developed in the early British colonies as different dialects converged.”

Koine is a language of a region that has become the common or standard language of a larger area.  Basically, a koine adopts those grammatical and lexical elments from the dialects of the region that are easily recognized by most speakers and dispense with those that are not.

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3. earwig– “Martin earwigged several of his coworkers, asking for their support in his effort to fill the position left open by the retiring editor in chief.”

Earwig means to annoy or attempt to influence by private talk.  Earwigs are small insects that once were thought to crawl into ears of sleeping people.  Over time, people connected the idea of having an insect in one’s ear to situations that involve whispering or speaking privately into someone’s ear.

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What new words have you encountered lately?