Thursday, May 7, 2009

Fav Things: New Words


coruscate \KOR-uh-skayt\, verb:
1. To give off or reflect bright beams or flashes of light; to sparkle. 2. To exhibit brilliant, sparkling technique or style.

Word of the Day for Thursday, May 7, 2009
http://dictionary.reference.com/

** can you guess why I like this word so much? Now I have to figure out a way to work it into my vocab today...

Coruscate comes from Latin coruscatus, past participle of coruscare, "to move quickly, to tremble, to flutter, to twinkle or flash." The noun form is coruscation. Also from coruscare is the adjective coruscant, "glittering in flashes; flashing."

They pulled up at the farthest end of a loop path that looked out over the great basin of the Rio Grande under brilliant, coruscating stars.-- Bill Roorbach, "Big Bend", The Atlantic, March 2001

Beneath you lie two miles of ocean -- a bottomlessness, for all practical purposes, an infinity of blue. . . . A thousand coruscating shafts of sunlight probe it, illuminating nothing.-- Kenneth Brower, "The Destruction of Dolphins", The Atlantic, July 1989

What coruscating flights of language in his prose, what waterfalls of self-displaying energy!-- Joyce Carol Oates, review of A Theft, by Saul Bellow, New York Times, March 5, 1989

Whether we know or like it or not, those of us who turn our hands to this task are scribbling in a line of succession which, however uncertainly and intermittently, reaches back to the young Macaulay, who first made his public reputation as a coruscating writer in the 1820s.-- David Cannadine, "On Reviewing and Being Reviewed", History Today, March 1, 1999

5 comments:

Pearl said...

ooh. i like that new word. :)

Ginger said...

Scate
Ok I really really like this post. My friend let me borrow her Kendal and I love how I can look up words on the spot!! Somehow between now and before I go to bed I am going to find a way to use coruscate!! Have a great evening...

Tangled Noodle said...

Your posts coruSCATE in the blogosphere!

Unknown said...

Hmm... I could try to be witty and use that word in a sentence now, but I know I would end up looking silly :). Just wanted to say thanks again for the meme award. I have listed it on my blog this morning.http://www.donutstodelirium.com/2009/05/meme-award.html

Claudia said...

For a writer, I am without words. Or only one word. Coruscate...coruSCATE. Coru-SKATE.