Thursday, March 20, 2008

Thursday Thirteen #2

Thirteen New Great-Sounding Words I've Learned From Reading Books by P.D. James and Now Try to Inject into Everyday Conversations

1. Wodge: as in "Carlotta stuffed large wodges of paper towelling into the gaping wound in Hubert's chest but just couldn't seem to stem the geyser of blood."

2. Badinage: as in "failing utterly to amuse Cynthia with his badinage, Wilson's mood turned black leaving Cynthia's future looking bleak."

3. Frisson: as in "plunging the bread knife ever deeper into Garth's back Gwendolyn experienced an intense delicious frisson and wondered where she had left her cardigan."

4. Factotum: as in "Chief Inspector Tollerby tossed his overcoat, drycleaning, grocery list, several boxes of cold-case murder files and tea order in the general direction of his factotum, Gloria. as she hunched over to give his shoes a quick polish."

5. Rebarbative: as in "a smell so rebarbative the uniforms couldn't control their gagging; it emanated from the bath, where a bloated body had obviously been soaking for far too long..."

6. Plimsolls: as in "Farrell tiptoed down the alley hoping that no one would notice all he was wearing was an over-sized pair of neon orange plimsolls..."

7. Venal: "Trevor, with his usual venal charm, smirked widely as he accepted the usual payoff for his amorous, if quickly efficient, attentions."

8. Insouciance: as in "with deceptive insouciance, Belinda chuckled as her husband's blood dripped steadily from a three inch slit in his throat onto her white satin pumps as he lay sprawled across her lap."

9. Ersatz: as in "would you like some coffee? Well, I don't know...is it real coffee or ersatz?"

10. Perfidy: as in "by the perfidy of her ex-lover, Barbara's current lover, Frederick, hung upside down at the bottom of the well, slowly drowning in six inches of mosquito infested sludge."

11. Effluvium: as in "an unpleasant effluvium of death invaded the outer office as the door swung steadily open causing Edward to back up step by step until he felt the icy tip of a steely blade press into the back of his neck..."

12. Filth: as in "we'd better get out of here before the bloody filth arrive and haul us off to the clink..." On second thought, I don't think it would be wise to use this one too often.

13. Quartosized: as in "with shaking hands, Timothy opened the quartosized letter, knowing without a doubt it was his long dead wife's handwriting...how could this be?"

I'm rather late getting this list out. I play volleyball on Wednesday nights and then worked all day today. Now I have a lovely four day Easter weekend - what a treat!

Happy TT everyone!


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8 comments:

chanpheng said...

Nice list of words, and next examples of using them!

scooper said...

Bloody filth...I like it.

Michelle said...

Very nice...haven't heard of too many of them!

Jayne said...

Ooo...good words!

Anonymous said...

I love it, I'll have to work some of these into my everyday conversations. Thanks for stopping by my list.

Bottles Barbies And Boys said...

Seeing my kids are the only ones I talk to, I don't guess I'll using any.They would think I was speaking alien if I used those. I can just hear them, 'huh'

Anonymous said...

I use them all, except rebarbative, which I shall add to my vocabulary immediately. The Filth is a nickname for the police in Britain, so bloody filth is even less flattering. Are you sure it isn't quarto sized, not quartosized?

Funn TTT. I enjoyed that.

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