/lit/ - Literature

For some reason they used a lot of words that I'm fond of. This is the first time I've seen "fugacious" in a while, which I really like. (It's like evanescent but less well known. Fug- like "run" as in "fugitive," or to play a "fugue" where your fingers run fast across the organ keys...) There were a few I didn't recognize though (Avulse?" I know I've come across inveigle before but I couldn't remember what it meant.)

There's this really fun essay by Anne Fadiman in her book "Ex Libris" where you finds a bunch of insanely esoteric words and then quizzes people she knows about them. (Basically extinct words, not easy ones like in this quiz.) I think she basically came to the conclusion that people with any kind of background in knowing Greek or Latin typically can suss out the meaning of the words (I think so anyways, it's been a while since I've read the essay.)