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.
tableaux (taˈblō): a group of models or motionless figures representing a scene from a story or from history | “Absent from these oversized tableaux is the inherently surrealist, contingent, “found” quality of the vernacular photograph, the quality my quartet of writers [Janet Malcolm, Walter Benjamin, Susan Sontag, Roland Barthes] so eloquently identifies and holds so dear.” - Index cards, Moyra Davey
gravid (ɡravɪd): 1. In an advanced state of pregnancy 2. full of meaning or a specified quality | “I tend to align myself, as Feaver seems to, with Robert Hughes, who asserted in 1987 that Freud was “the greatest living realist painter.” He made the ordinary gravid, and sublime.” - “The Devilish Life and Art of Lucian Freud, in Full Detail,” The New York Times
vernissage (vərnəˈsäZH): a private viewing of paintings before public exhibition | “Rubin had refused a gallery vernissage, and on the opening day the place was nearly deserted.” - Stories of Art and Artists
derisory (dɪˈrʌɪs(ə)ri): 1. ridiculously small or inadequate 2. another term for derisive “In truth, at thạt time I had still spent very few days in the desert: a derisory amount in the sum of my forty-two years of life.” - Friend of the Desert, Pablo d’Ors
doyenne (dɔɪɛn): the most respected or prominent woman in a particular field | “An electrifying lockdown collaboration between the doyenne of diamond jewelry and the enfants terribles of the design world.” - from Nowness