Words of the Week

 Here are some noteworthy words that I encountered over the past week. Definitions from the OED.

Palimpsest: A parchment or other writing-material written upon twice, the original writing having been erased or rubbed out to make place for the second; a manuscript in which a later writing is written over an effaced earlier writing.

Simulacrum: Something having merely the form or appearance of a certain thing, without possessing its substance or proper qualities.

Halcyon: A bird of which the ancients fabled that it bred about the time of the winter solstice in a nest floating on the sea, and that it charmed the wind and waves so that the sea was specially calm during the period

Aleatory: Dependent on the throw of a die; hence, dependent on uncertain contingencies.

Anaplasty: Reparation of external lesions by the use of adjacent healthy tissue.

Enanthema: A mucosal, as opposed to a cutaneous, eruption. (yum!)

Lurid: Pale and dismal in color; wan and sallow; ghastly of hue. Said e.g. of the sickly pallor of the skin in disease, or of the aspect of things when the sky is overcast.


Neophilia: Love for, or great interest in, what is new; a love of novelty. 

Phantasmagoria: A shifting series or succession of phantasms or imaginary figures, as seen in a dream or fevered condition, as called up by the imagination, or as created by literary description.

Procrustean: aiming or tending to produce uniformity by violent and arbitrary methods.

Tinsel: Anything showy or attractive with little or no intrinsic worth; something that gives a deceptively fine or glittering appearance.

Jejune: Unsatisfying to the mind or soul; dull, flat, insipid, bald, dry, uninteresting; meager, scanty, thin, poor; wanting in substance or solidity. Said of thought, feeling, action, etc., and esp. of speech or writing; also transf. of the speaker or writer. (The prevailing sense.)