Actually, my favorite use of "defenestration" comes from Calvin & Hobbes:


The monster, in his consternation,
Demonstrates defenestration...

(From The Essential Calvin & Hobbes)

Andrew wrote: "Difinistrate- To throw one out a window or other object head first."

Like the baby was difinistrated after the bath water. (giggle)

Sorry x.x

I've loved that word since the first time I met it, in a Modern European survey course.

We were discussing "The Defenestration of Prague," which started the Thirty Years War. (In 1618 the local Protestants threw the local Austrian governors out the windows of Prague Castle. They landed on a pile of manure in the old moat and survived!)

Correctly spelled:

defenestrate.

What a pedantic bother that Mosca is!

Andrew wrote: "Difinistrate- To throw one out a window or other object head first."

or:

to switch to Ubuntu, or similar operating system.

;-)

Difinistrate- To throw one out a window or other object head first.

humunculation

I've just finished reading another amazing bit of prose by Louise Erdrich, this time in Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse.

This time she inserts this word (in bold above) that seems unique to this book. A search of references and the internet provide no definitions. The internet only references discussions groups and blogs that themselves only refer back to this book and passage.

So Louise Erdrich invents a word.

However the few paragraphs of prose leading up to this word's use are typically marvelous Erdrich english. So I will quote them here for whoever's pleasure.

Setting: In a North Dakota convent in the early twentieth century. A young nun, Sister Cecellia, is playing the piano by herself (she thinks).

"...Her playing was of the utmost sincerity. And Chopin, played simply, devastates the heart. Sometimes a pause between the piercing sorrows of minor notes made a sister scrubbing the floor weep into the bucket where she dipped her rag so that the convent's boards, washed in tears, seemed to creak in a human tongue. The air of the house thickened with sighs.

Sister Cecellia, however, was emptied. Thinned. It was as though her soul were neatly removed by a drinking straw and siphoned into the green pool of quiet that lay beneath the rippling cascades of notes. One day, exquisite agony built and released, built higher, released more forcefully until slow heat spread between her fingers, up her arms, stung at the points of her bound breasts, and then shot straight down.

Her hands flew off the keyboard —she crouched as though she had been shot, saw yellow spots, and experienced a peaceful wave of oneness in which she entered pure communion. She was locked into the music, held there safely, entirely understood. Such was her innocence that she didn't know she was experiencing a sexual climax, but believed, rather, that what she felt was the natural outcome of this particular nocturne played to the utmost of her skills—and so it came to be. Chopin's spirit became her lover. His flats caressed her. His whole notes sank through her body like clear pebbles. His atmospheric trills were the flicker of a tongue. His pauses before the downward sweep of notes nearly drove her insane.

The Mother Superior knew something had to be done when she herself woke, her face bathed in sweat and tears, to the insinuating soft largo of the Prelude in E Minor. In those notes she remembered the death of her mother and sank into an endless afternoon of her loss. The Mother Superior then grew, in her heart, a weed of rage against the God who had taken a mother from a seven-year-old child whose world she was, entirely, without question—heart, arms, guidance, soul—until by evening she felt fury steaming from the hot marrow of her bones and stopped herself.

"Oh, God, forgive me," the Superior prayed. She considered humunculation, but then rushed down to the piano room instead, and with all of the strength in her wide old arms gathered and hid from Cecellia every piece of music but the Bach."

After that, Erdrich has a right to invent a word.

Catholic schools: Yes strict in U.S., Florence, Italy and in England (so I have been told)

"Valhalla" legendary "heaven" for old soldiers...and where a Viking hoped to go when he died...the legend has it he had to die with his sword in his hand in order to "make it" to Valhalla (German word).

Recommended reading: From Asgard to Valhalla: The Remarkable History of the Norse Myths
by Heather O'Donoghue

I wouldn't know; I'm too parochial. ;)

Are all catholic schools the same world over?! :-)

Sowmya,

Parochialism was a word I knew instantly what it meant the first time I read it. I was raised a Catholic and went to Parochial Schools (taught by parish priests and nuns). Of course I knew what parochialism meant. ;)

parochialism- parochial character, spirit, or tendency; excessive narrowness of interests or view; provincialism.

From a Confederacy of Dunces.
"The parochialism of the ghettoes of Gotham had not prepared her for the uniqueness of of Your Working Boy."

What's the usage, Grace?

Curricle- I still am not sure what exactly it is. I'm assuming it's a horse-drawn carriage of some sort. But why would you hang it?

quotidion: daily, commonplace, ordinary

From the 2009 Pulitzer winner Olive Kitteridge A Novel in Stories - Elizabeth Strout

"You could even expect to have a kind of midlife crisis-but there was nothing to explain what he felt was happening to him, that he'd been put into a transparent plastic capsule that rose off the ground and was tossed and blown and shaken so fiercely that he could not possibly find his way back to the quotidian pleasures of his past life."

Not a word, but an expression I have never heard before, from Touchstone:

England, 1926, a formal dinner in an important house, describing where all the guests were sitting:

... twenty years ago, a ducal family ... would not have shared a table with half the people here, including himself {the hero}--the question of seating would never have arisen.

Was there even a salt any more, to sit below?

To sit below the salt http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_the_...

That is a great phrase, Mosca!

That's a cool word, Megha.

OK, here's a new one to me. And I didn't read it in a book; I discovered it here at Goodreads in a thread in another group I that follow Here

We are discussing the writer Iain M. Banks who generates strong opinions from readers both positive and negative.

A comment by a member from the UK:

I am a big fan of Iain Banks but I think he is definitely something of a marmite author.

Apparently marmite author is a colloquialism that I assume is used in the UK. This comes from the product Marmite and means an author that people either love or hate. Marmite is a paste that advertises itself as something folks either love or hate. I am familiar with the stuff; and I hate it.

My assumption is that this phrase is not simply limited to authors and that there can also be marmite artists, marmite celebrities, marmite movies, marmite politicians, etc.

If someone from the UK wants to clarify, I will be grateful. But I love the phrase.

This is not a new word to me, but I've come across it 3 times recently, so I figured that meant I should post it:

eponymous - giving one's name to a nation, tribe, or place

Ha ha! My family uses wambly all the time, but I htought it wasn't a real word and thought it would be spelled wombly. Learn something new everyday.

Just finished reading "Surrender" by Pamela Clare (wonderful book!) and came across a word I've never encountered before:

wambly - affected with nausea (the heroine was pregnant and had a 'wambly belly')

Christina wrote: "Wow how did you learn that from Calvin & Hobbes!?!?"

Calvin uses big words fairly often. I can't find the particular strip with this word, but it is somewhere there.

Wow how did you learn that from Calvin & Hobbes!?!?

Christina wrote: "Haha I like how this thread turned into a Calvin & Hobbes discussion! I think I own all the books - best comic written, in my opinion!"

So, getting back to words...

Here is a new word I learnt from Calvin & Hobbes, :D
Weltanschauung: comprehensive conception or apprehension of the world especially from a specific standpoint. ( or in simpler words, it means 'world view').

It is originally a German word, but is used in English text as well.

Haha I like how this thread turned into a Calvin & Hobbes discussion! I think I own all the books - best comic written, in my opinion!

Hayes wrote: "I love Calvin and Hobbes! Thanks for the link."

you're welcome.

BJ Rose wrote: "Sowmya wrote: "its just a cardboard box..."

To children, nothing is just a cardboard box. I remember Christmases past & present when the little ones opened the package, put aside the gift inside, ..."

True! My son, did just that until a couple of years ago

I love Calvin and Hobbes! Thanks for the link.

Sowmya wrote: "its just a cardboard box..."

To children, nothing is just a cardboard box. I remember Christmases past & present when the little ones opened the package, put aside the gift inside, and played with the box!

BJ Rose wrote: "Sowmya,
No, sorry, I didn't follow Calvin and Hobbes, altho my kids ate it up - what did it look like?"

Rose, its just a cardboard box, a pretend transmogrifier. Check here for the particular strip
Calvin and Hobbes

Megha wrote: "Here is another one of Calvin's inventions, a cloning machine :


He had a time travel machine too. I am sure now everyone can guess what it looked like. ;)"



Megha LOL!

Here is another one of Calvin's inventions, a cloning machine :


He had a time travel machine too. I am sure now everyone can guess what it looked like. ;)

Sowmya wrote: "BJ Rose wrote: "heard this one while watching CSI

transmogrification: the act of changing in form or appearance; transforming in a surprising or grotesque manner"

Have you seen the transmogri..."

Yes, that's where I had heard of this word first too. A 6 year old kid who hates school can still teach us new words :)

Rose, Calvin's transmogrifier looks just like a cardboard box. Calvin's imagination does the rest :D

Sowmya,
No, sorry, I didn't follow Calvin and Hobbes, altho my kids ate it up - what did it look like?

BJ Rose wrote: "heard this one while watching CSI

transmogrification: the act of changing in form or appearance; transforming in a surprising or grotesque manner"

Have you seen the transmogrifier built by Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes?
I learnt that word from the cartoon :-p

heard this one while watching CSI

transmogrification: the act of changing in form or appearance; transforming in a surprising or grotesque manner

Oops! Sorry!

Proletarian: A social class comprising those who do manual labor or work for wages.

Apparently us "real" proletarians don't know what it means! Lol! It was probably a sneaky way to talk about the working class behind their backs! :)

And what is its meaning CrimsonButterfly? Even I don't know its meaning.

I ran into the word Proletarian while reading The Hundred Secret Senses. I had to look it up because I had no idea what it meant.

I came across this one yesterday, and am really surprised I haven't seen it more often, with all the drinking scenes in historicals:

bibulous - fond of drinking alcoholic liquor; addicted to drink.

JG wrote: "Logorrhea:

1. pathologically incoherent, repetitious speech.
2. incessant or compulsive talkativeness; wearisome volubility.

I came across this one in the introduction to [b:The Picture of Dori..."

Good example with Stephen King there.

Although I don't have a word to share yet, I wanted to share a new site I discovered:
http://www.wordnik.com/
It's sort of like an online dictionary, but goes much further. Check it out!

Logorrhea:

1. pathologically incoherent, repetitious speech.
2. incessant or compulsive talkativeness; wearisome volubility.

I came across this one in the introduction to The Picture of Dorian Gray. I don't remember how they used it, but I've always thought of it as, "Stephen King's books frequently suffer from logorrhea," as in "wearisome volubility." I'm not knocking Stephen King; I do love him. But his books seem to always be bricks.

Splenetic :
1 (Archaic): given to melancholy
2 : marked by bad temper, malevolence, or spite

Megha wrote That's wonderful. Such smart tiny fellows they are!
:)

Atishay wrote: "Megha wrote Wow, I didn't know that.
That makes the gun even more interesting.

*chuckles*
You'll be amazed to know what Jerry did in that cartoon, he opened Tom's gun powder bag and Tom had that b..."

That's wonderful. Such smart tiny fellows they are!

solipsism : a theory holding that the self can know nothing but its own modifications and that the self is the only existent thing ; also : extreme egocentrism

(from the book The Tin Drum

I work with doctors and pick up on strange medical terms with some eagerness. I came across one in the book I'm reading now (In the Beginning Was the Ghetto Notebooks from Lodz):

erysipelas which I have discovered to be an acute streptococcus bacterial infection of the skin, so severe affecting the fat tissues beneath the skin. There is more about the infection here if anyone else is interested.