Reading time: About 1 minute
Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: palaver.
I had never heard of the bestselling novel The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared until I saw my 20-year-old daughter wandering around the house with it. She was laughing — and she doesn’t do that with very many novels — so I thought I’d give the book a try.
I’m just beyond the halfway point now and, like my daughter, I’m enjoying it immensely. This Swedish book has been variously described as “a black novel that reads like a road trip with Forrest Gump at the wheel,” and “the biggest European publishing sensation since The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”
I like it better than the Dragon Tattoo (and Forest Gump for that matter), and not just because it’s funny. It’s also quirky and improbable and unputdownable. A great summertime read!
Part of the story traces the 100-year-old’s escape from his nursing home. But there’s also a backstory that traces the man’s involvement in some of the most important events of the 20th century, involving some of the most important people (hello Madame Mao and Robert Oppenheimer). The book is both completely improbable and utterly charming.
I’m also grateful that it has given me my word of the week, the noun palaver:
A palaver immediately started up between, on the one side, Kuomintang’s company command in Yibin and, on the other, Soong Mei-ling’s bodyguards.
Of course I knew that a palaver was an unnecessarily long talk, usually on a matter of no importance, but I had no idea about the etymology of the word. A quick consult with my dictionary let me know that it dates back to 1733 and it’s from the Portuguese palaver meaning “word, speech, talk.” Originally a traders’ term for “negotiating with the natives” in West Africa, it originated from the Latin parabola meaning “speech, discourse.”
