WORDS!

Being a wordsmith, I, of course, love words. I love to discover new ones that I've never heard before, or maybe I've heard them, but never knew what they meant, and need to go look them up. That's when I jot them down for later.

Such words are always cropping up. I can remember where I've seen/read nearly every one of these that I'm going to give you today. Yes. Always I find them in books, of course. But each one I remember what author, and even which book I've found them in. Dean Koontz has always been a great word master, thus a number of my special words have come from him, through the years. Another author would be J.K. Rowling, mainly because she is British, and I may need some British slang, or word that is particular to them for some character in my book.

My first word I found in the book by Dean Koontz Face –an excellent book, by the way.

foible: strange behavior trait particular to an individual.

This one is from J.K. Rowling:
queue: (British) a line—as in people waiting in line to be served.

Sometimes you need an odd word or two to add to the distinctive diction of a character. Here are a few that would probably be considered colloquial enough that might not be found in a dictionary. I see that nearly all of these my spell check found offensive enough to underline.

Okee dokee
skedaddle
brewskis
har de har

The above I've found in the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich. I love her wacky character in Stephanie Plum.

And I have one more. This one is actually a phrase that, if you can't spell worth a damned, you will spell it wrong, but think you've got it right because your spell check will not catch it:

death throe(throe means pang)

That's it for todays WORDS.

Happy writing, everyone!