Dust and Spores

Hosted by Bermuda Onion, the point of this meme is to share all the new words you came across this week. Yay!

Ok I haven't slept in two nights so let's get this over with. I read two or three books in a row that provided no words whatsoever, so I was glad to start a book today that gave me three in the first 30 pages.

These are from Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima.

cenotaph -- a tomb or a monument erected in honor of a person or group of persons whose remains are elsewhere

It had been composed with an artist's eye for structure: it really made it seem as if the thousands of soldiers who were present were arranged deliberately, like figures in a painting, to focus the entire attention of the viewer on the tall cenotaph of unpainted wood in their midst.

pellucid -- two definitions here: reflecting light evenly from all surfaces ; easy to understand

And the drop of ink spread, dull and gray, clouding everything in his heart that had been pellucid only a moment ago.

I think both definitions apply, but one is more metaphor pellucidness.

tonsure -- the practice of some religious sects of cutting the hair from the scalp of clerics, devotees, or holy people as a symbol of their renunciation of worldly fashion

After her ritual tonsuring, she declined to accept one of the benefices reserved for imperial princesses, deciding instead to found a new temple, one whose nuns would devote themselves to study of the scriptures.