Week 13: vocabulary
1. alpenglow: a reddish glow seen near sunset or
sunrise on the summits of mountains.
In the soft alpenglow, we watch copper turn pink on the
peaks above.
-- Brian
Payton, "A river of dreams", Boston Globe, July 25, 1999
Her inscrutable figure -- imposing in designer subfusc,
slightly donnish, reminiscent of Vita Sackville-West, to whom she was distantly
related -- baffled and intrigued some.
-- Yvonne
Whiteman, "Obituary: Frances Lincoln", Independent, March 6, 2001
In much the same bold spirit, I rapidly absorbed the
other gestures, turns of phrase and exclamations popular among my peers, as
well as grasping the deeper mores and etiquettes prevailing in my new
surroundings.
-- Kazuo
Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans
Look at . . . his cows with their comic camouflage
dapples . . . .
-- Arthur C.
Danto, "Sometimes Red", ArtForum, January 2002
And, oh, it was a sweet smile, they said, none sweeter,
so winsome and large it transformed her melancholy face.
-- Flavia
Alaya, Under the Rose
The first white settlers in the area started as yeomen,
scouring the land of trees and verdure to create and homesteads.
-- Claude
Andrew Clegg III, An Original Man
The first white settlers in the area started as yeomen,
scouring the land of trees and verdure to create and homesteads.
-- Claude
Andrew Clegg III, An Original Man
Fussing about in black smalls, silks, buckles, cocked
hat, and always with a prodigious nosegay , Lowther could not conceivably have
been a less romantic character.
-- Kenneth R.
Johnston, The Hidden Wordsworth
Her large images, which are cloaked in an elegant oneiric
mist, transport the viewer to an ideal world where bodies seem to have become
weightless ghosts of themselves.
-- Simona
Vendrame, "Nature and the solitary self, translated by Jacqueline
Smith", Temaceleste
Her first answer was laudable -- she wrote that yes, she
would remain engaged to a man who fell seriously ill subsequent to the
engagement.
-- Enid Nemy,
"Metropolitan Diary", New York Times, January 11, 1999
If we are to believe that country's literary pundits,
"irreparable damage to a great British institution" may soon be done
by an invading army more puissant than
Hannibal's or Alexander's, an army Marching out of the creative writing schools
of American universities, leaving Will Shakespeare's sceptred isle
"smothered amid a landslide of books from the US".
-- Jonathan
Yardley, "Bring on the Yanks", The Guardian, June 5, 2002
On the far side of the cloister in the long, chapel-like
room called the Treasure, she sits on her throne -- a small stiff gold figure
robed in gold and covered with jewels and crowned with a golden diadem.
-- Hannah
Green, Little Saint
He was no longer an ebullient, energetic adolescent.
-- Linda
Simon, Genuine Reality: A Life of William James
His initial broadcasting success was due at least as much
to his considerable professional aplomb as it was to his father's broadcasting
connections.
-- John A.
Jackson, American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock 'n' Roll
Empire
This world and the other, too, are always present to his
mind, and there in the corner is the little black kobold of a doubt making
mouths at him.
-- James
Russell Lowell, Among My Books
16. prestidigitation: performance
of or skill in performing magic or conjuring tricks with the hands; sleight of
hand.
He was the man who had sat alone in a room for hundreds
and hundreds of hours, his fingers manipulating cards and coins until he had
learned and could perfectly reproduce every form of prestidigitation found in
books of magic lore.
-- Brian
Moore, The Magician's Wife
The men are second cousins, around forty, resembling each
other not very much, one taller and leaner, less rubicund than the other, who
has just returned from California.
-- John
Lukacs, A Thread of Years
She wanted to tell him how she felt and feel that lambent
look that was better than sunshine, his look of offering all that was in him.
-- Anna Shapiro,
"The Scourge", USA Today, July 23, 2001
Numbness . . . may have replaced pain as the complaint of
our century now that aspirin analgesia, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agents
(NSAIDS), and other anodynes can take away the pains of the civilized world.
-- Howard M. Spiro, Facing Death
This is not the face of an ingenue; this is an old soul
in a new body -- wary, wise to her own long past, on to the wiles of the world,
and having miles to go before she sleeps.
-- Sarah Ban
Breathnach, Something More
In the end, however, all the stealth and subterfuge were
for naught, as the young publicity agent couldn't keep the secret.
-- Larry Tye,
The Father of Spin
22. maelstrom: a large,
powerful whirlpool; also, a violent, disordered, or turbulent state
of affairs.
Suddenly, the Serb cause was thrust into the maelstrom of
the Napoleonic Wars.
-- Misha
Glenny, The Balkans
Most communication systems in luminescent fireflies have
been studied in nocturnal species; little is known concerning communication in
crepuscular and diurnal species.
-- Nobuyoshi
Ohba, "Flash Communication Systems of Japanese Fireflies", Integrative
and Comparative Biology, June 2004
This repast could scarcely have been digested before a
"tea" of fresh bread, butter, cheese, cold meat, and cake was served
at half past six.
-- Joan
Druett, Hen Frigates
Hamilton's voice droned on, hypnotic, soporific, the
gloom beyond the windows like the backdrop of a waking dream.
-- T.
Coraghessan Boyle, Riven Rock
Comments
Post a Comment