Friday, March 7, 2008

"Expensive Words" -- the ones i like best

My friend David sent me this e-mail yesterday--

"I’m working on a feasibility study for a law library and I ran across a word for today, Incunabulum. Now there’s a word you won’t use every day. It means the first printing of a genre of books, usually before AD 1501. La Dee Da"


What you need to know is David used to sit next to me at work and introduce amazing new words almost every day, he and I enjoy the same love of words and discovering them. Incunabula (singular noun) also has a second definition: the earliest stages or first traces of anything. I've been told that these kinds of words are 'expensive' and I should be charged to use them in polite company -- now that's an interesting concept.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

When I was in school people used to ask me "But what are you going to DO majoring in Classical Languages?" and now the answer is clear, I get to offer minute grammatical corretions on Anna's blog. Incunabulum is actually the singlular form and incunabula is plural. It's likely a second declension neuter noun.