This meme was created by RachelKiwi over at She is too fond of books and it has addled her brain. She decided that Fridays should be dedicated to logophilia. Logophilia is “the love of words” for all of you without a dictionary close at hand.
Posts are dedicated to either a new word you found in your reading this week, a juicy quote, or a general need to share your vocabulary ability. ‘Cause you know you’ve been dying to show off your reading skills since that final time you took your SAT’s.
This week’s words come from my new read The Fault in our Stars by John Green.
Diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer at 12, Hazel was prepared to die until, at 14, a medical miracle shrunk the tumours in her lungs… for now.
Two years post-miracle, sixteen-year-old Hazel is post-everything else, too; post-high school, post-friends and post-normalcy. And even though she could live for a long time (whatever that means), Hazel lives tethered to an oxygen tank, the tumours tenuously kept at bay with a constant chemical assault.
Enter Augustus Waters. A match made at cancer kid support group, Augustus is gorgeous, in remission, and shockingly to her, interested in Hazel. Being with Augustus is both an unexpected destination and a long-needed journey, pushing Hazel to re-examine how sickness and health, life and death, will define her and the legacy that everyone leaves behind.
I’ve earmarked so many of his words. He uses them uniquely and with multiple meaning. The writing is exceptionally beautiful as well. Such a delight that I had to pick more than one word!
Without Further Ado, My Word(s)…
hamartia (həˈmɑːtɪə) — n
- literature the flaw in character which leads to the downfall of the protagonist in a tragedy
- medical A developmental defect characterized by the abnormalarrangement or combination of tissues normally present in aspecific area.
“…and pulled out, of all things, a pack of cigarettes…
…”Are you serious?” I asked. “You think that’s cool? Oh, my God, you just ruined the whole thing.”
“Which whole thing?” he asked, turning to me…
…”The whole thing where a boy who is not unattractive or unintelligent or seemingly in any way unacceptable stares at me and points out incorrect uses of literality and compares me to actresses and asks me to watch a movie at his house. But of course there is always a hamartia and yours is that oh, my God, even though you HAD FREAKING CANCER you give money to a company in exchange for the chance to acquire YET MORE CANCER…”” (19, eBook ed.)
What I think is so smart about the use of this word is it’s double meaning for our new love interest’s potential character flaw (spoiler: he doesn’t actually smoke them, which is kind creepy but our heroine seems to understand). It also serves as a pretty apt definition of cancer itself…which is the subject matter of the book.
Full Disclosure: didn’t know the secondary meaning of the word till I looked it up. Goes to show you should just Google every word you don’t understand. Or at least have your Nook look it up for you. Mine’s good like that 😉
toroid (ˈtɔːrɔɪd) — n
- geometry a surface generated by rotating a closed planecurve about a coplanar line that does not intersect the curve
“…one day I was shooting free throws – just standing at the foul line at the North Central gym shooting from racks of balls. All at once, I couldn’t figure out why I was methodically tossing a spherical object through a toroidal object. It seemed like the stupidest thing I could possibly be doing.” (26, eBook ed.)
The word toroidal surprised me. I wasn’t expecting it to pop up there. Made me happy that it did.
sobriquet or soubriquet (ˈsəʊbrɪˌkeɪ) — n
- a humorous epithet, assumed name, or nickname
“Now, it wasn’t as if I held my phone in my sweaty hand all day, staring at it while wearing my Special Yellow Dress, patiently waiting for my gentleman caller to live up to his sobriquet.” (47)
Not gonna lie. John Green is smarter than myself. Took me at least 3 re-reads of that sentence to figure out what the ‘sobriquet’ was…Tricky, tricky capitalizing Special Yellow Dress. Like verbal camouflage.
there are so many words from this book that i don’t know. which depresses me because these are teenagers talking.
i looked up “univalent” which means single or unpaired. it’s a chemistry term, so that relieved me a bit. i dont do science.
also, i beat you. it took me TWO times to read the “sobriquet” sentence to figure out the sobriquet. just rubbing it in. also john green makes me look like a preschooler.
hahahahahaha, We always knew you were the brains of this operation. And I bow down to John Green’s grasp of the language. I’m sure we’re missing 90% of the fun!
Love these new words. Love John Green. GE is always teaching me new things.
What a truly fun meme idea! I love words. And I love learning new words. So thanks for teaching me some new ones. I can’t wait to read this book.
Happy Friday!
[…] by and meet Sara @ The Librarian Reads. She does a great post on Fridays, For the LOVE of Words. She shares a great words that popped up during that week’s reads. Stop by and read her shout […]