Words and Snippets

 

I love coming across words I’m not familiar with when I’m reading a book. I also love a really nice description or phrase. I’ve started collecting them. Here are a few:

 

Wincey – I read this word in the first book of the Anne of Green Gables series by L. M. Montgomery. An awesome series, by the way. It said Anne was wearing an ugly dress of yellowish grey wincey. Looking it up, wincey is also called linsey-woolsey. It’s made with a linen warp and a wool weft.

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Dree my own weird – submit to my destiny/fate. “If I must dree my weird, let me dree it now.”

DREE is the verb, WEIRD is the noun. Came across this in a very funny mystery by Sharyn McCrumb called Zombies of the Gene Pool. It was a sequel to Bimbos of the Death Sun. Both books are hilarious.

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Concatenation – a series of connected things or events. Many years ago I got a t-shirt from a catalog of cat stuff. The picture on the shirt was a line of cats with their arms interlinked, and the word Concatenation below it. I had to look the word up. Loved that shirt. Wish I still had it.

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“The room had greenish distempered walls.” From the book Manhattan by John Dos Passos. Wonderfully written book. The phrase above was describing the hallway of a hospital.

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From the book Mystery House (1935) by Kathleen Norris

Sarah was fifty-seven, grey headed and distinguished in appearance. She was talking later in her room, “her clean elderly fingers knitting busily.”

Her friend Page was 26, but was worried about the passage of time. Her twenties, “with all their vanishing potentialities, were rushing by her like a dream. Thirty, a hideous and hopeless landmark, was looming straight ahead.”

Interesting take on women and age. I didn’t view myself as elderly when I was 57. And I certainly didn’t view 30 as being hideous or hopeless.

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“If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.” No clue where I got this one, but I liked it.

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The rest of these are from various mystery books by Ngaio Marsh

“(The memory brought a) jolt of pain so violent and personal it brought tears to her eyes.”

 

Concerning a nervous man in a courtroom: “Feasting quietly upon his fingernails.” You can almost see him doing this, can’t you?

 

“The rocks came down grimly to the water’s edge.” Really makes me think of a rather barren sea side.

 

“The naked trees, fast, fast asleep, stretched their lovely arms against an iron sky.” I absolutely LOVE this passage! I could feel the winter surrounding me.