Literary Lexicon #1

Hello and welcome to a new feature on the blog, Lindsay's Literary Lexicon! One thing I love about reading is that it's constantly teaching me something -- often, new words. I always like to keep my phone handy so I can look up unfamiliar words in my dictionary app, and I thought it'd be fun to share all the additions to my vocabulary (and other stuff I have to look up too, from flowers to snakes to castles). Do tell -- what new words have you learned lately?

1. conkers: horse chestnuts; a game in which each player swings a horse chestnut on a string to try to break one held by the opponent
"She had beautiful hair. Conker-brown, but conkers when they're freshly fallen, before they dull." -- Fiercombe Manor by Kate Riordan

2. whist: to be silent, hush
"When I met him he was thirty-six, already eleven unimaginable years into his unhappy union. He once said that you would imagine time spent like that would crawl by -- the inverse of it flying when you are enjoying yourself. But in fact those years, packed tightly with obligation -- tennis doubles and dinner parties and whist drives -- had been compressed instead." -- Fiercombe Manor by Kate Riordan

3. haptic: relating to or based on the sense of touch
-- Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

4. ontology: a branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature and relations of being; a particular theory about the nature of being or the kinds of things that have existence

"Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation" -- Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

5. carapace: a hard shell on the back of some animals, such as turtles or crabs
-- Golden Son by Pierce Brown

6. aegis: a shield or breastplate emblematic of majesty that was associated with Zeus and Athena; a protection
-- Golden Son by Pierce Brown

7. susurrus: a whispering or rustling sound

8. inchoate: not completely formed or developed yet

9. funicular: having the form of or associated with a cord, usually under tension

10. logorrhea: excessive and often incoherent talkativeness or wordiness (I like this one!)

And, after repeatedly reading about them in "Fiercombe Manor," I looked up buttercups. I was surprised to learn they're part of the ranunculus family. And apparently the type of flower I always think of as a ranunculus -- round and vibrant with tightly packed petals -- is sometimes called a persian buttercup. (image source)