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 haven’t found a lot of new vocabulary in my reading so I had to turn back to my Word-a-Day calendar.
1. sparge – “Part of the disinfecting process at the new water treatment plant may involove sparging the water with ozone bubbles.”
I’ve used this word when I’ve brewed beer – you sparge the mash to extract the wort – but really didn’t know it’s meaning. Sparge generally means to sprinkle or bespatter; especially: spray, but in the sentence above it means to agitate by means of compressed air or gas entering through a pipe.
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2. collogue – “And how long have you been so thick with Dunsey that you must collogue with him to embezzle my money?” — George Eliot, Silas Marner
In this sentence, collogue means to intrigue or conspire.
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3. ramify – “The rise of cable television ramified the viewing population creating ever smaller segments for an ever growing array of programming choices.”
Ramify means to separate into divisions.
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What words do you want to celebrate today?
I am amazingly impressed that you can spare!
Whoopsie! I meant sparge! Which I wrote but which my iPad changed!
I wonder if collogue comes from the same etymology as collude: to conspire, plot. Great words today!
Nope, nope, and nope.
I did not know these either. Although ramify made me think ramification, but I did not think that it fit your description. Next week WWW, I will let you know what I found out.
I knew ramify, the others had me stumped!
Great new words Kathy. I found another new word in your post: wort. You used the word when you were explaining sparge. I’m off to check it out.
No to all three.
Hi Kathy,
A great selection of words this week, none of which I knew the exact definitions of, although I too would have probably thought of collude rather than collogue and ramification rather than ramify … So close, yet so far away 🙂
Thanks for sharing and hosting 😉
Yvonne
Kathy, excellent WWW post! I knew ramifications, but not ramify! I like your sources for these words, your Word-a-Day calendar and the book Silas Marner.
I love that you knew one because of beer making!