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: walleyed.
While on holiday recently, I read the memoir Undress Me In the Temple of Heaven by Susan Jane Gilman. The story of Gilman’s 1986 trip to China — which had then just opened to tourists — gives new definition to the term “clueless.” A recent university grad, Gilman doesn’t really understand the necessity of planning, of respecting other cultures and of being alert to the possibility of mental illness in her travel companion.
Still the book is entertaining, if you can put aside your irritation with the hapless lead character. In the end, I was grateful that the book caused me to look up the word walleyed. Here is how Gilman use it:
Gunter was impossible to miss. He towered above everyone else, a shaggy, walleyed giant with his meaty hands open by his sides, his belly like a presentation, an offering.
-marked by excited or agitated staring of the eyes, as in fear, rage or frenzy.