Wondrous Words Wednesday
Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where you can share new words that you’ve encountered or spotlight words you love. Feel free to get creative! If you want to play along, grab the button, write a post and come back and add your link to Mr. Linky!
I found several new to me words in The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers and will share three of them today.
1. connex – “We hoped that she’d been happy, that she took advantage of her special status before she inevitably arrived under that falling mortar, having gone out to hang her freshly washed uniform on a line behind her connex.”
Connex isn’t in my dictionary, but according to dictionary.com it means a large metal cargo container used by the U. S. Army for shipping supplies, as to overseas bases.
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2. notional – “Mere outlines took shape, and the city, vague and notional at night, became a contoured and substantial thing before us.”
After I looked it up, I realized notional makes perfect sense. It means theoretical or speculative.
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3. wadi – “I can reach to my cheek and for a moment remember how the skin was unblemished, then torn, and then healed below my eye like a wadi in miniature.”
In this case, I believe wadi means a shallow usually sharply defined depression in a desert region.
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What words do you want to celebrate today?
Notional I definitely knew, I feel that I’ve seen or heard wadi before, but could never have put a definition to it. Connex seemed familiar, a quick google makes me realise it’s written on the trains in Melbourne. Your definition is certainly interesting in relation to that. Passengers packed into train carriages….
Interesting words, these are all new to me.
I didn’t know any of them. Great words, Kathy!
Notional? I like that.
Didn’t know any of these today, interesting words.
I have never heard the word wadi before, but I can imagine one after reading your definition. Thanks for the great words today!
I’m sure my husband knew the first one!
I believe in context I would have figured out number 2, but the other ones…no way!
Terrific words, Kathy! The word I want to share (from my word calendar) is–don’t laugh–ripsnorter, which means something extraordinary or a humdinger.
I’m sad I didn’t have time to participate this week, but I like your words. I knew wadi from some translation I did, but because it’s one of those words that remain the same, I realized now I only had a generic notion of what it was. Thanks for sharing!