Those following this blog for the best part of this year may know that I have a very limited vocabulary. I know, not what you want to read from a blogger. But hey, we’re all here to improve so here are 30 words I’ve recently read in books and just not understood, with complimentary meanings!
Please comment your score, out of 30, so I can see how many words you all knew too! And we can all revel in the learning!
- Blini- A Russian pancake that looks so good on Bing images.
- Abmonition- A fierce warning
- Blouson- Basically a blouse but in jacket form. Imaginative naming there.
- Cadence- an inflection of the voice
- Modicum- a small bit of something valuable.
- Pique- Stiff fabric. Basically anything after I’ve washed it.
- Eviscerated- Disembowelled. Funny story, I wrote down this word twice so there was clearly a lot of fancy named disembowelling in this book.
- Thresher- A person who separates grain from crops. Not to be confused with Fresher, who occasionally attends lectures.
- Boon- A helpful thing
- Incongruous- Something out of place in it’s surroundings. Basically me in a club.
- Capricious- A sudden change of mood.
- Insurrection- A violent uprising against government. How has it taken me this long to find this word in a YA novel?!
- Stein- A nice big beer mug. I actually think I knew that…
- Mired- Stuck in mud or a splatter of mud.
- Expediently- Convenient but often immoral.
- Tatterdemalion- This is just a really long word for tattered?! Who invented this thing??
- Discordant- Disagree
- Suture- A stitch. No surprise I didn’t know that one then.
- Livery- A type soldier’s uniform.
- Bowyer- A person who sells bows.
- Philanderer- A man who often enters into casual sexual relations.
- Wherewithal- Something, like money, needed for a specific purpose.
- Anachronistic- Something from another time. Like seeing a mobile phone in a period drama, I’ve been reliably informed.
- Imbibed- Drinking too much.
- Incorrigible- A person not reforming their behaviour.
- Proclivities- And inclination towards a certain thing.
- Gargantuan- A very long word for a big appetite.
- Balusters- A short decorative pillar.
- Accoutrements- An extra piece of clothing
- Finial- a nice pointy thing on some roofs
Books, Life and Other Oddities 
My score was 20, but I have to admit I never knew there was such a word as tatterdemalion! 😅
Anachronistic means something which doesn’t belong in a particular time – for example if a book set in the 19th century contained a mobile phone. 🙂
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Nor did I! I was actually very disappointed by the meaning though 😂 ooh ok, I’ll change that, thanks!
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Great post!
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Thanks!
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Livery; the most common use is a special uniform worn by a servant. I.e. a lackey, butler, chauffeur, maid, etc…
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Ah cool, didn’t know that! Thanks!
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I knew 14. When I was reading The Secret History by Donna Tartr I used to write down the words I didn’t understand a lot, but that doesn’t happen to me much.
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It’s a lot of effort tbh, and I often miss them because the story is just too good to interrupt 😂 and I don’t do it with Audiobooks so the lists are in no way exhaustive 😂
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Interesting post! My score was 25, though with some of the words I didn’t know, I knew other meanings, so just those mentioned are new to me. And if it helps, anachronistic usually refers to something that is from a time period other than the one being portrayed, as in, if you’re watching a movie set in pioneer times, and you see a cell phone on a character’s belt.
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Yeah I found that, and then wondered why this complex word exists when theres a simple one 😂 guess I’m not a linguist 😂 ah yeah someone else mentioned! I’ll amend it 😁 oh the other commenter used the exact same example!
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Hah, sorry about the repeated information! I looked through the other comments, but apparently not very closely!
I had to look up “balaclava” a couple days ago, and found out that it was a fancy word for the “ski mask” the author had already described with the simple words “ski mask.” I get trying to vary word choice, but it wasn’t as if these 2 word uses were close together, so the choice seemed weird.
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