8th
Even Harry Potter teaches new words
Even a well-read adult who considers herself a partial word maven can learn a new word now and then, and even while reading what began as a kid’s book and morphed into a global phenomenon — Harry Potter. I was reading the second book, “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” today. And as is my usual habit, I folded the page to save my place when I ran across an unfamiliar word. Today, that word was “apoplectic.” Upon looking it up, I found that it means pertaining to, caused by, or affected with apoplexy. A search on apoplexy yielded the following meanings.
In the first Harry Potter book, I only had to look up two words and one phrase: 1) Stoat, as in “stoat sandwich,” which Hagrid the Giant served to Harry and his friends. That turned out to be something akin to a weasel; 2) Prefect; 3) and finally, the phrase “dropped trowel,” which worried me when I read that Hermione, Harry and Ron did this at one point in the book. Thankfully, after perusing the various definitions for this phrase under the Urban Dictionary site, I determined that author J.K. Rowling most likely meant the one archaic phrase on the list. It evolved from the masonry trade, and refers to stopping work and/or walking away from a task.
