Words from Ninety-one Years Ago for a Spanking New 2022…

A page from my mother’s 1931 journal.
Living in Carmel-by-the-Sea, Gloria Stuart Newell was twenty-one and married to a gifted but penniless young sculptor. By day she was writer/editor/typesetter/printer on The Carmelite newspaper…by night she acted/stage managed at the Theater of the Golden Bough…words were her meat and drink…
Words I Like
poignant
garland
warbled
furze
copse
ravished
dalliance
bonniest
bootless
oaten
wimple
fustian
welkin
tawny
apogee
oleaginous
moribund
oblate
manumit
palingenesis
I confess I didn’t know what oleaginous, manumit, and palingenesis were…looked them up, still don’t.
Words I like?
Can’t think of any right now…flummoxed by manumit and palingenesis.
Hey, there’s one: flummoxed.
May delicious words—old and new—enrich your year!

2 Comments. Leave new

  • Manumit is a verb meaning to release from slavery. I believe it means release by the “owner”, rather than, say, Abraham Lincoln. Oleaginous means greasy, doesn’t it?
    I like flummoxed. Its a great word.
    I’m sorry I never got to meet your mother.

    Reply
  • Yes indeed manumit and the oleo word—but um the P word? Wonder where she found it. Ah, Deborah, She would very much have cottoned to you…

    Reply

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