Accidental Word Discovery by Jenn McKinlay

JENN McKINLAY: Recently while sitting at my laptop, slinging words, I accidentally typed “cark” in a sort of car/park mashup. When the little red squiggle line didn’t appear, I thought, 
cark is a word? For real? Yes, for real. 

According to Merriam-Webster, it is both a verb and a noun but in both cases it's not good - it is either carking (vexing) about something or to be beset by cark (trouble). All this time I could have been yelling at the Hub and Hooligans to stop carking my mellow, alas better late than never.

A visual representation of cark!

So, Reds, I ask you, what words have you discovered by accident through writing or reading that surprised you?

HALLIE EPHRON: So, to cark is to kvetch. I like it. 

Traveling has always been a source of word discovery. In the UK I discovered that there's such a thing as a chucker-out. It's the bouncer at your local pub. And from being a grammar geek, INTERROBANG. It's a punctuation mark used at especially at the end of an exclamatory rhetorical question, written as ?! Also PHOSPHENE. It's that luminous explosion you see when you squeeze (and keep) your eyes shut. Mine come in checkerboards.

LUCY BURDETTE: My favorite new word came courtesy of Julia while we were doing a panel for JRW at the Albany Bouchercon. Runneling. A runnel is a brook or a rivulet, so runneling means streaming like a rivulet. I think Julia used this in context of blood runneling down a wall...though my dictionary is not so sure it's a real word, I love it!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Thank you, Lucy! These days, I'm happy to remember old words. While I was writing recently,  I was searching my memory, looking for a word that meant 'a tent-like shade over a window.' It wasn't until I was driving through Portland and saw one it came flashing back to me - awning! Not an extraordinary word; I don't know why I couldn't pull it out of my hat. Some of my favorite new words have come from looking for non-boring ways to describe the scenery of the farm country around my fictional Millers Kill. Vetch. Silage. Biscuit wood. Byre. It's a challenge for someone as botanically challenged as I am - I tend to look at all things low and green and say "grass," while everything stalky with a blob of color on top is a flower.

Oh, I remember a very new word! Eyot, meaning an island in the middle of a river. Don't you love odd words for geographical features?

RHYS BOWEN: Because my books are set in the past I have great fun using words that have been lost from our current vocabulary. Flummoxed and curmudgeon and many more that will come to me the moment I finish this post. A favorite word to impress others is RIPARIAN... meaning of the river bank. So a riparian stroll is along the edge of the river!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Ha, Lucy, my favorite new word in my new book is "rill", which is another word for runnel. Although I've used rill in the sense of a deep trench, which might or might not have water at the bottom. 

I love Rhys's flummoxed and curmudgeon, but another of my favorites, too seldom used, is "obstreperous ," resisting control or restraint in a difficult manner; unruly.  So useful!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I was thinking about this, and reading the wonderful new book by Denise Mina called CONVICTION— it is absolutely amazing, by the way – – and came across the word meroculous.  Meroculous?

Have you ever heard that word? I never had. 

The book also had the word “diffident,” which I never use, but should. 

And Rhys, I always say flummoxed! And curmudgeon. Am I living in the wrong time?

Finally, I just got back my second round of copy edits, and the copy editor wanted to know if I really meant “I squinted my ears to hear.” I stetted it.

All right, Readers, what new and dazzling words have you found of late?