In the genres I habitually read, it’s not often that I can pick up a book and have it throw me words I’d never seen before. It’s even rarer that a book will throw me more than one word I don’t know. Elizabeth George is one author who’s done this, with her Inspector Lynley mysteries.
And now Chaz Brenchley is another author. I just had the pleasure of finishing his House of Doors, and even aside from quite liking it (moody, atmospheric haunted-house type story, just the sort of haunted-house story I like), I was delighted to find nine words in it I’d never seen before.
Here, for your amusement and edification, I present them: blench, exeat, hurly, ukase, inutile, landaulet, bruit, pedicle, and inculcate!
Bruit was particularly amusing to me as I had recognized that as a word in the title of one of the albums in my Quebecois music collection, namely, Le Bruit court dans la ville.
