word of the day: tod

word of the day: tod

Margery Sharp’s vocabulary is prodigious — and in her children’s books she seems to make no attempt to write for those less logophilic. When the right word is the big one, she doesn’t switch it out for a less apt synonym. I created Word of the Day posts for the first two books in the Mouse Prisoners’ Aid Society series, The Rescuers and Miss Bianca. 

But I’m prepping several more for the third book, The Turret. It amuses me to be taking vocab lessons from children’s books. Part of what makes The Turret thicker with unfamiliar words is Sharp’s Britishisms, those words or phrases for which there is another word with virtually identical meaning in American English. In America we say “shell game” for the game in which you try to guess under which cup the pea is hiding. In Britain they call the game a “thimble rig.”

context for the word of the day: 

Though its top part was now no more than a wig of ivy tods, the turret commanding the moat even in dilapidation still rose slender and colorful. It was built of yellow marble, which where unconcealed by ivy gleamed softly in the now declining sun. The ivy grew thicker as it climbed …

definition (Merriam-Webster): (British) a bushy clump (as of ivy)

source:

The Turret

by Margery Sharp

illustrations by Garth Williams

1963. Little, Brown, & Co., Boston