1. lord of misrule: a master of Christmas revels in England, especially during the 15th and 16th centuries
The lord of misrule was in charge of the Christmas revelries, which included partying and drunkenness. Wild partying aside, I love this humorous title, and think I'll start using this term, although I'm not sure anyone in my family will understand what it means (unless they happen to stop by here).
The next word is also from my desk calendar, from November. Originally, my idea was to collect a few book-related words and present them together in a Wondrous Words Wednesday post, but because the year is almost over, I decided instead to "hurry up" and put the word I've been saving in today's post. Literature students are most likely familiar with this word:
2. bildungsroman: a novel about the moral and psychological growth of a main character
Bildungsroman is a combination of two German words, bildung, which means education, and roman, which means novel. There are many bildungsromans, including Jane Erye, David Copperfield, and The Catcher in the Rye (Holden Caulfield). Do you have a favorite bildungsroman?
The last word is from the novel I'm currently reading, A Matter of Mercy by Lynne Hugo, which I'll review next month during the TLC book tour.
3. cultch: the mass of broken stones, shells, grit, and gravel that forms an oyster bed
Here is the sentence from the book:
"Caroline walked off the grant, cultch crunching under her boots."
I could picture this, and hear the crunch, but I looked cultch up to get a precise definition (and to help me remember how it's spelled--it can also be spelled without the 't', as culch).
Hosted each week by Kathy from BermudaOnion's Weblog, Wondrous Words Wednesday is a fun celebration of words. What are your latest word discoveries?
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