This week in Word of the Day: 11-25-12
Taken from my daily writing indulgence, originally posted on my Facebook page:
fob \FOB\, noun:
1. A short chain, usually with a medallion or similar ornament, worn hanging from a pocket.
2. A small pocket just below the waistline in trousers for a watch, keys, change, etc.
verb:
1. To cheat someone by substituting something spurious or inferior.
2. To put (someone) off by deception or trickery.
“Another log for the fire,” the man grunted as he reached into his chest, pulled out his shattered heart, plucked it from the veins like a pocket watch from a fob, then tossed it into the fireplace. He watched the flames lick away at the fleshy mound, the blood sizzling and popping. He closed his eyes to focus on the heat. “I will grow another,” he whispered as his skin paled to a ghostly white. “It will be ugly, weak, and malformed, but it will work well enough to keep me alive.”
giblets \JIB-lits\, noun:
The heart, liver, gizzard, and the like, of a fowl, often cooked separately.
Everyone knew how hard the divorce had been on Laine, so when she appeared from the kitchen with a tray piled up with candied giblets, the only reply from her party guests were a dozen forced smiles and two more popped bottles of wine before chocking down the poor woman’s culinary atrocity.
agape \ah-GAH-pey\, noun:
1. Unselfish love of one person for another without sexual implications.
2. The love of Christians for other persons, corresponding to the love of God for humankind.
She was once a brash, angry, and sexually charged young ruffian known for her short skirts, bruised knuckles and run-ins with the small town’s sheriff’s department. That all changed when she married the wrong man. Year’s of emotional and physical abuse diminished her. She finally awoke and clawed her way out of the misery, stumbling out into the world alone, for the first time in her life. The hatred that plagued her throughout her youth had tempered to a rigid resolve, digging out the foolish love that had chained her to a monster and replacing it with a genuine and selfless agape that led her to become a strident champion of women’s shelters. She was no pacifist, though, as she proved by wielding a tire iron and a broken beer bottle to chase away a fuming, drunk husband looking for his wife.
balsamaceous \bawl-suh-MEY-shuhs\, adjective:
Possessing healing or restorative qualities.
It wasn’t love. It couldn’t be love. No, he was an old man now and romance seemed an anachronism, a relic of a past life that no longer fit in with his lazy afternoons at darkened bars and quiet, lonely meals staring at the chair that once held a wife – dead twelve years now. With this new woman, it couldn’t be love. It was too late, his body too worn, his time too short, yet she had a beaming, balsamaceous smile that warmed him to his soul. When she walked into the room, his body moved a little faster, his ears listened a little better and even the doc said the cancer wasn’t spreading as fast anymore. It was probably a coincidence, but he decided he’d visit her room in the nursing home a few more times a week, just in case.
potvaliancy \POT-val-yuhn-see\, noun:
Brave only as a result of being drunk.
It was a moment only made possible by the fifth of peppermint schnapps, but potvaliancy or no, Theo’s life trajectory swerved dramatically the moment he finally stood up to Reggie at the FFA annual bonfire on Eliza’s family farm. The lanky son of Austrian immigrants stood no chance against the hulking farm-boy and, by the time Reggie was pulled off, Theo had suffered a broken arm, shattered nose and three missing teeth. But Theo never stopped fighting. Never. That moment would be just the first chapter of the epic legend of Theopold Lognowski, D.F.A.
amygdaliform \uh-MIG-duh-luh-fawrm\, adjective:
Shaped like an almond.
“Amygdaliform Defense” entered legend immediately following the surprise acquittal of a quiet, unassuming boy with a drifting left eye and a timid, self-deprecating smile. Well liked in his school despite his shy nature, no one could have guessed the boy capable of multiple homicide during a nervous breakdown on the final round of the school Spelling Bee when he was given the now notorious word, “Amygdaliform”. After the rampage, with the blood of school administrators dripping from his trembling fingers, he calmly walked back to the microphone and muttered, before the gasping audience, “What the hell was that, English language?”
