New Words for Writers: Expanding Your Vocabulary

New Words for Writers: Expanding Your Vocabulary

If you don’t know about it, be sure to check out wordsmith.org. If you subscribe, you can receive a word a day in your mailbox. This is a great way for writers to learn new words. Each week the words are organized around a theme.  This week’s theme, for example, is eponyms, a word I had to look up.  In case you too are wondering, an eponym is “a person or thing, whether real or fictional, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named.”  For a list of eponyms, go to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_eponyms_%28A-K%29

Today’s eponym is mithridatism, another word I didn’t know, but I love the definition: “noun: The developing of immunity to a poison by taking gradually increasing doses of it.”

What poison have you developed an immunity to?  What price did you pay in the process?

These questions take us to feelings of shame, something we don’t generally like to talk about, but feelings—especially those on the darker end of the spectrum, are where we writers need to go if we want to develop stories that have substance and deep meaning. Sometimes, if we have the courage, we share these stories, and in the process heal ourselves and others. Sometimes, it’s best to simply write them and leave them be.

However you look at it, writers need new words, and ideas and wordsmith.org has them.