Wondrous Words Wednesday
Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where we share new (to us) words that we’ve encountered in our reading. If you want to play along, grab the button, write a post and come back and add your link to Mr. Linky! All of my words this week came from my handy Word-a-Day calendar.
1. velleity– “Samuel talks about going back to school, but his interest strikes me as more of a velleity than a firm statement of purpose.”
Velleity means a slight wish or tendency: inclination.
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2. infix – “The Philippine language of Tagalog adds infixes such as -um- and -su- to verbs to convey different tenses and voices.”
Infix means a derivational or inflectional affix appearing in the body of a word. Infixes are rare in English, but they are in the plural forms of some words, like passersby – the s is the infix.
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3.forfend– “Anticipating that the price of the stock would only continue to plummet, we sold our shares in an attempt to forfend a major loss.”
Forfend means to ward off: prevent.
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Have you come across any new words lately?
O I like velleity!
I love infix – must find a way to work it into conversation! :–)
Fun words! I especially like infix.
I like forfend. I felt tempted to write “fore.” Had to look at the word again.
http://readwithtea.blogspot.com/2011/02/wondrous-words.html
I didn’t know any of these words, so this post today was very edifying for me. Thanks, Kathy!
All new to me. I really like forfend. I’m going to try add it to my vocabulary.
Just imagine how many words we don’t know. Amazing!
We speak the same language !
Velleity is just “velléité” in French and with the same meaning !
i am going to work these into conversation today!
Yay – I knew one!
I learned all about infixes when I was studying linguistics, so that’s the only reason I knew what they were.
I knew the first two, but forfend is a very good one to add to my vocabulary! Thanks!
These are all excellent words, Kathy.
here’s mine http://tributebooksmama.blogspot.com/2011/02/wonderous-words-wednesday_23.html
I love the Word-a-Day Calendars! The words you get are useful, too. I once had one with words that were entertaining but so far out you’d never use them.
I can definitely see myself using forfend, which reminds me of forfeit, and velleity. I like velleity quite a bit!
I posted some words:
Amy’s words!
New ones for me again
great words, I didn’t know any of them.
I love infix – never thought about that method of pluralization having its own term. It’s good to know the word for it. Now, if it would only show up as a trivia question next time we’re having family game time …
Whoa…I’ve never come across any of those!
Interesting words! I was only familiar with forfend.
My words are here.
I like infix. What a great concept! I love learning about language structures that are rare or nonexistent in English. They give such an insight into the many ways that humans think and communicate.
All of these seem useful, but will I remember them?
forfend… no can’t apply that to buying books… love doing that way too much.