Here we are, another Wednesday, another chance to learn some new words! These are from Scottsboro – we got a Teaser yesterday and we’ll get a review later this week. For now, here some interesting words from the Depression:

1. “Unlike most of my friends, I had not even bothered to buy a dime-store wedding band when I had gone to a clinic to be fitted for a pessary.”

Pessary: diaphragm: a contraceptive device

2. “I did not need Mrs. Gorse to tell me that pellagra, scurvy, rickets and beriberi ran rampant.”

Pellagra: a vitamin deficiency disease caused by lack of niacin (vitamin B3).
Beriberi: a vitamin deficiency caused by lack of thiamine (vitamin B1)
(And just in case you hadn’t seen them before, scurvy is caused by a lack of vitamin C and rickets is caused by a lack of vitamin D.)

3. “The audience took a few minutes to quiet sufficiently for her to take the chair representing the witness stand and repeat the testimony she had given in the courtroom, edited for dramatic purposes and delivered with a brio she had not shown in Decatur.”

Brio: animation; spirited or alive and vigorous

4. “The only difference was the contingent of twelve Negroes among the one hundred veniremen.”

Veniremen: A potential juror summoned for duty.

I don’t usually find a bunch of words that I don’t know well! This was really interesting! What words did you learn this week?