Friday, December 19, 2014

Wondrous Words Wednesday

I'm behind on the weekly word-lovers posts of new words I've come across while reading. It’s called Wondrous Words Wednesday and was created by Kathy at BermudaOnion’s Weblog.  Here are some new words I picked up this week from Peter Mendelsund’s What We See When We Read:

Verisimilitude - "We would rather have sketches than verisimilitude". 

The word means "the appearance of being true or real.  That makes sense.

Mimesis - "...we haven't seen his [daffodils] so we must imagine them, spurred by the poet's words-his mimesis."

This word is defined as imitation, in particular the representation or imitation of the real world in art and literature.
So the poet's is his imitation of what is described, in this case Wordsworth's daffodils.

Harridan - "...it adds a sympathetic psychological depth to a goddess [Athena] traditionally characterized as a shrill and jealous harridan"


This one I can relate to! The definition is a strict, bossy, or belligerent old woman!

1 comment:

  1. I've heard harridan before but I had the meaning totally wrong. The other two words are new to me. Thanks for playing along!

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