s/o 2011 books: vocab list of shame

[nmoira]

 

The big question is, what's a "Buffy?"

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, whence with learned such words as "bint" and "effulgent."

[KidsHappen]

What in the heck are you reading woman? I have always prided myself of having a very good vocabulary. I do very well on most tests and rarely have to look up a word. I think I knew maybe five of these. :glare:

[Lizzie in Ma]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, whence with learned such words as "bint" and "effulgent."

 

lol, me too :D

[Violet Crown]

Thank goodness for a place like the WTM forum where I can hang out with people like Rivka and Tibbie and let their erudition rub off on me!

 

And thank goodness (even more) that there were some other people who didn't know what these words meant, either. Maybe I should have read more of my grandma's Reader's Digests and Increased My Word Power. See what public schools did to me?

 

I just looked it up. A boubou is a Sengalese dress.

 

Yes, that one came from Camara Laye's The Radiance of the King. Camara was from Guinea.

 

So what exactly were you reading this year?

I've been trying to do the Book-a-Week Challenge, but it's been roughly book-every-two-weeks really, and then only because I've started counting individual Shakespeare plays as "books." Hey, I'm reading the introductions and notes! It should count!

 

27. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 1

26. Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors

25. Tolstoy, Master and Man and Other Stories (Father Sergius, Master and Man, Hadji Murat); S. Rapaport and John Kenworthy, trs.

24. Graham Greene, The Honorary Consul.

23. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War; Rex Warner, tr.

22. Gerald Hanley, Drinkers of Darkness

21. Henry James, What Maisie Knew.

20. Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native.

19. Henry James, The Spoils of Poynton.

18. Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.

17. Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm.

16. Terence, Phormio & Other Plays. Betty Radice, Tr.

15. Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here.

14. Goethe, Faust: Part One. Philip Wayne, Tr.

13. Robert Musil, Young Torless. Eithne Wilkins & Ernst Kaiser, Tr.

12. Chris Wright, Dr. Wright's Kitchen Table Math: Book 1

11. John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor

10. Fernando de Rojas, The Spanish Bawd (La Celestina); J. M. Cohen, Tr.

9. Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil; various tr.

8. Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House and Other Plays (The League of Youth, A Doll's House, The Lady From the Sea); Peter Watts, Tr.

7. Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind*

6. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

5. Graham Greene, A Burnt-Out Case

4. Aeschylus, The Oresteia (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides); Robert Fagles, Tr.

3. Camara Laye, The Radiance of the King

2. St. Augustine, Sermons for Christmas and Epiphany

1. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

 

 

Am I really the only one who knows Boeotian? I feel like a Greek geek.

I knew its straightforward meaning "inhabitant of Boeotia," but I didn't know its secondary meaning "stupid, backward, dull."

 

Well yes. Little English children (and this little Australian) read all about badgers in Enid Blyton's books :)

Who was to know? Texas badgers are plain-livin' folks who make do with holes. ;)

 

So the big winners seem to be bint and atavism. I feel no shame for not knowing the former, as my fault seems to lie in insufficient viewing of vampire dramas, but apparently I really should have know the latter. I even had a brief conversation with dh about it. "You really didn't know what atavism means?" he said. "Shut up," I explained.

 

Thanks to all who made me feel less stupid (or stupider--it drives me on!). On to 2012!

[stripe]

I'd just like to announce that I was reading "Marigold in Godmother's House" to my kids this morning, and there was a besom mentioned. Snort.

[Mommy22alyns]

I'm sorry. Could you translate your list to English please?

 

:o

 

:lol: Unfortunately, I have to agree.

[Splinter]

I know - atavism, pirogue, feculent, debouch, estaminet, agalma, pullulating, jalousie and peculation. My 9 year old knows pirogue and feculent.

[Lang Syne Boardie]

So pirogue..is that like those Polish dumplings (Pirogi)? :lol:

 

:lol: And they all sailed away in a dumpling...

 

here's a pirogue. It's a flat-bottomed boat.

 

[Spy Car]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, whence with learned such words as "bint" and "effulgent."

 

See, I thought Buffy was Jody's sister.

 

It's a Family Affair :D

 

Bill (unfamiliar with the Vampire Slayer)

[Hikin' Mama]

except farded (okay, my juvenile self just slipped out, I'll put her back now).

 

Seriously, though, I love to learn new things, so I would take this list of unknowns as a good thing! The older I get, the more I realize how much there is that I do not know. I'm actually excited about that, because it means I won't get bored in my old age. There will still be books to read and things to learn!

[stripe]

I had a dream last night that I missed "claiming" a word on this list, that I overlooked "pevlovian" because I spelled it Pavlov.

 

Imagine my disappointment to see that "pevlovian" is not, in fact, on your list.