I occasionally post new-to-me words discovered via my literary rambles. I do this for my own edification. If you happened to stumble across this post and you are a word nerd (like me), then you might enjoy discovering these as well. Following each word is a short definition, trailed by the context in which the word was found. (Learn how I easily capture these and why I started this series, here).
- bonhomie: a disposition to be friendly and approachable (easy to talk to) | "Sam and Eddie Hart have certainly inherited at least one characteristic from their father Tim that is, I believe, essential for a restaurateur: each smiles with a genuine sense of bonhomie." - Nicholas Lander, The Art of the Restaurateur
- interregnum: the time between two reigns, governments, etc. | "No friend who worried about Salinger's future should have let him publish 'Seymour an Introduction' in The New Yorker without daring to lose his friendship first by telling him how awful it was. Yet there was too much depending on Salinger's interregnum - he was so inoffensive, finally." - David Shields, Shane Salerno, Salinger | "We are in a period of interregnum, between a time when we had certainties and another when the old ways of doing things no longer work." - Zygmunt Bauman, Interview, EL PAIS
- traduce: speak unfavorably about | "Someone must have traduced Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning." - Kafka, The Trial | "My traducer's lonely aerie was not easy to locate, though I had been there once before, on a similar journalistic errand." - John Updike (as Henry Bech), "Questions of Character: There's No Ego as Wounded as a Wounded Altar Ego"
- cicerone: a guide who conducts and informs sightseers | "Both had ciceronal gifts, huh?" - Letter from Robert Phelps to James Salter, Memorable Days
- perfidious: tending to betray; especially having a treacherous character as attributed to the Carthaginians by the Romans | "The attitude goes back to a long history of "perfidious" half-breeds, men who, by their nature, had to choose against one of their bloodlines." - William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways | "I declare myself opposed to several matters in the constitution, particularly to the manner in which, what is called the Executive, is formed ... I also declare myself opposed to almost the whole of your administration; for I know it to have been deceitful if not even perfidious ... - Letter from Thomas Paine to George Washington