Feature & Follow (September 28): Balderdash!

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Welcome to the Feature & Follow Hop, hosted by Parajunkee’s View and Alison Can Read!

If you’re here for the first time, I’d love if you could follow via email, RSS, LinkyFollowers or Networked Blogs. Just let me know your follow method of choice in the comments, and I’ll be happy to return the favor.

And if you’re not new, welcome back! Repeat visitors are better than having a friend show up unexpectedly at your door with a Dr. Pepper float from Sonic, JUST FOR YOU.

Just kidding. That happened a few weeks ago, and it was amazing. I don’t think it’s beatable.

Today’s question is:

What is the BIGGEST word you’ve seen used in a book lately – that made you stop and look it up?

Okay, this may come across as me being a little bit braggy, but honestly I think it’s more of a nerdy thing. When I got together with my friends in high school, we played Scrabble or Boggle (or Alternative Guess Who, which is amazing fun. “Does your person claim their favorite song is Freebird, but in reality, it’s Call Me Maybe? No?” *flips down Bill, Maria, and Richard* That has nothing to do with anything, except that I need to go buy a Guess Who set right now so I can play that with someone). When my family has game night, we play Balderdash (also great fun). I’ve always had a fairly extensive vocabulary. I’m that annoying person that other people tell to “stop using big words,” except that I don’t realize the words I’m using are big.

*sigh* You hate me now, don’t you?

Anyway, I’ve never had to stop and look up a big word. That’s not to say I’ve never come across a new word while reading, but I try to figure out the meaning from context clues (and sometimes I am wrong; I thought for the longest time that “nonplussed” meant “unconcerned,” when in fact it means the opposite). But I honestly can’t ever remember breaking out the dictionary or heading over to Wikipedia to figure out what a word meant.

That said, the book that most recently stumped me, not with vocabulary but with terminology, was The Unnaturalists by Tiffany Trent. I don’t have the book anymore, so I can’t give you an example, but I felt like I needed an advanced degree in the mythologies of several cultures to fully grasp everything in there. I understood enough to grasp what was going on, but some of the little things left me…nonplussed.*

I really want to go raid the Toys & Games section of Target now. Probably not the intended side effect of this topic.

P.S. If you’re going to follow anyway, you should go ahead and enter my Six Months of Blogging Giveaway. You can win your choice of any one of my favorite books I’ve read while blogging. Doesn’t that sound fun?

*Do you see what I did there? (And yes, I realize I used it kind of incorrectly AGAIN, but I couldn’t resist.)

15 thoughts on “Feature & Follow (September 28): Balderdash!”

  2. I rarely if ever have to look up a word either. I usually just assume that my assumption as to the unfamiliar word’s meaning is correct. I would be nonplussed to find out I was ever wrong 😛
    But recently, in reading David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas I did come across a word that stumped me. It was “peregrinations” and I couldn’t even guess at it’s meaning from the rest of the paragraph. Check out my FF here
    I’m a new Linky and RSS follower.
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  11. I used context clues too, but if I’m on my Kindle I can just look up a word easily. However, sometimes if I’m reading a physical book and there’s a word that annoys me, I have to stop and look it up or it will bug me forever. LOL.

    BTW, Guess Who…I got that for Christmas! 🙂

    My F&F

    Old follower!

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