Wondrous Words Wednesday 2/11/11

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a fabulous weekly meme hosted by Bermuda Onion, where we share new (to us) words that we’ve encountered in our weekly reading.  

This weeks Wondrous Words come from Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach.

1. Pavane (Noun)

Their courtship had been a pavane, a stately unfolding, bound by protocols never agreed or voiced, but generally observed. 

i) A slow, stately court dance of the 16th and 17th centuries, usually in duple meter.

ii) A piece of music for this dance. (The Free Dictionary)

2. Calumny (Noun)

But even as he listened in hostile silence to this calumny, he felt a burden lifting. 

i) A false statement maliciously made to injure another's reputation. 

ii) The utterance of maliciously false statements; slander. (The Free Dictionary)

3. Anglepoise (Noun)

In a corner, under the slope of a roof, was a scrubbed deal table with an anglepoise lamp and a kitchen chair, painted blue.


A balanced-arm lamp designed in 1932 by British designer George Carwardine. (wiki)

The famous Pixar logo has an anglepoise lamp

4. Millenarian (Adjective)

He chauffeured Violet around, once to a Schopenhauer symposium in Winchester, and on the way she grilled him about his interest in millenarian cults. 

i) Of or relating to a thousand, especially to a thousand years. 
ii) Of, relating to, or believing in the doctrine of the millenium. (The Free Dictionary)

5. Monads (Noun)

He was in no position to know what an unusual situation the Pontings' was, a don married to a successful businessman, and Violet, a sometime friend of Elizabeth David, managing a household in the vanguard of a culinary revolution while lecturing to students on monads and the categorical imperative. 

i) Philosophy. An indivisible, impenetrable unit of substance viewed as the basic constituent element of physical reality in the metaphysics of Leibniz. 

ii) Biology. A single-celled micro-organism, especially a flagellate protozoan of the genus Monas. 
iii) Chemistry. An atom or a radical with valence 1. (The Free Dictionary)


The philosophical definition is clearly the one in use here.