Word count: 207 words
Reading time: Less than 1 minute
Building your vocabulary is always a good idea. It benefits your reading and it also helps you be more specific and precise in your writing. Here is my word of the week, cupreous.
I’m going through a Julian Barnes phase right now. I’d never read any of the contemporary English author’s books before. But a friend recommended his most recent novel, The Sense of An Ending (winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize) and I enjoyed it very much.
From there, I headed towards Flaubert’s Parrot, his 1984 story of an elderly doctor who focuses obsessively on the life of Gustave Flaubert. I’m only partway through, but the early pages have already given me my word of the week: “Let me start with the satue: The one above the permanent, unstylish one crying cupreous tears.”
I wasn’t familiar with the word cupreous but as soon as I looked it up, I felt a bit daft. It means “of or like copper.” I should have been able to guess that from the context! The word comes from the 1660s Latin, “cupreus.” I think it’s a bonus that I can visualize the tears in both their cold, solidified state and in their molten hot one.
