Happy Wednesday — it’s time for some new words! You know how this works – share a few words from your current book that you had to look up, then head over to Bermuda Onion’s Weblog to learn some new ones.

This week, I’ve got some very unusual words from my recently-finished book, Blood and Other Cravings. It’s a book of short stories, so there are a lot of different writing styles to draw from.

1. Sordes – dirt or debris; dark brown or blackish crustlike deposit on the lips, teeth, and gums of a person with dehydration

“The last time his bowels moved, he took the shriveled sordes and crushed them up with garlic, for the windowsill.”

2. Verso – A left-hand page of an open book, or the back of a loose document

“He dips into it at random, picking up the text at the top of the verso page, reading until his eyes ache, setting is aside with no marker.”

3. Apostasy – The abandonment or renunciation of a religious or political belief

“When he is confronted with such apostasy he thinks of sucking out their brains, the gray and spongy material that surrounds their tiny thoughts, and draping them on a line to wave in the breeze before he puts the torch to them.”

4. Kilim – A flat-woven carpet or rug made in Turkey, Kurdistan, and neighboring areas.

“Cora bought a genuine kilim rug to offset, she said, the bad taste of the flowery chintz covers Janice got for the couch and chairs.”

So that’s a little sampling from my book…what new words did YOU learn this week?