Occasionally, I post new-to-me words discovered during my reading rambles. I do this for my edification. If you’ve stumbled across this post and you're a word-nerd, you might enjoy these as well. Following each word is a short definition (sometimes with a thought interjected parenthetically), trailed by the context in which the word was found.
dernier cri: the very latest fashion | Looking askance with coquettish flirtation at the fashion hubs of Europe, making a commendable effort not to lag behind the dernier cri from Paris, London or New York. - Alexandrian Summer, Yitzhak Goren
torero: a bullfighter | David Hamdi-Ali, tall as a toreador, blond as a Nordic cavalier, elegant like Rudolph Valentino, leaps with agility in his supple white leather shoes, subduing the drowsy virus whose journey through his body has finally run its course to conclude with a series of asthmatic coughs. - Alexandrian Summer, Yitzhak Goren
contumacious: (especially of a defendant's behavior) stubbornly or willfully disobedient to authority | “She points out Psyche to him and says [to Cupid] ‘My dear son, punish that contumacious beauty; give thy mother a revenge as sweet as her injuries are great; infuse into the bosom of that haughty girl a passion for some low, mean, unworthy being, so that she may reap a mortification as great as her present exultation and triumph.’” - Bullfinch’s Mythology, Thomas Bullfinch
anaphoric: the use of a word referring to or replacing a word used earlier in a sentence, to avoid repetition, such as do in I like it and so do they; repetition of a word or expression at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, sentences, or verses especially for rhetorical or poetic effect, such as Lincoln's "we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground," is an example of anaphora | “Each line launches an impression that is at once modified, then launched again. Second thoughts grow out of initial misapprehensions, and this mental action is reflected in the sounds of the words as the anaphoric syllables reach after one another from verse to verse (akrō … akron … akrotatō lela-tbonto … eklelathont’).” - Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet
disquisition: a long or elaborate essay or discussion on a particular subject. | Sappho tells us twice, emphatically, the real location of her poem: ‘He seems to me.… I seem to me.’ This is a disquisition on seeming and it takes place entirely within her own mind.” - Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet