This is a little early because Blogger sucks today and says everything is a bad request.

I am so excited to have some great words this week! These are from a book I just finished, The Physic Book of Deliverance Dane. I really enjoyed this one – look for a review next week.

1. maleficium – A curse which was anciently annexed to donations of lands made to churches and religious houses, against those who should violate their rights.

“Interestingly, research into the kinds of maleficium – her tongue tangled on the Latin word, sending it out with one or two extra syllables,”

2. Henbane – poisonous fetid Old World herb having sticky hairy leaves and yellow-brown flowers

3. Moonwort – Seedless vascular plants of the genus Botrychium, sensu stricto. They are small, with fleshy roots, and reproduce by spores shed into the air.

“…alighting on some obscure flowers that she knew only form horticulture books: monkshood, henbane, foxglove, moonwort.“

4. Simulacrum – a vague representation; semblance; image; likeness.

“The interior assembled around her out of the gloom, a perfect simulacrum of a first-period, pre-1700 house,”

5. Cordwainer – An individual, usually a shoemaker, who works in Cordovan leather.

“…and Goodman Pakfrey a cordwainer, who was forever volunteering for town committees.”

6. Steeplejack – A steeplejack is a craftsman who is prepared to scale tall buildings and in particular church steeples to carry out general repairs.

“SAMUEL HARTLEY, it read. STEEPLEJACK.”

7. Antinomian – related to the doctrine that faith frees the Christian from the obligations of the moral law

“A small number of cases all within a few yearsof one another seemed to correspond with the Antinomian crisis,”

There are more, but I think I’ll save them for next week. What new words did YOU learn this week?