ersatz \AIR-sahts\ adjective

Tucker sat in the doctor's waiting room surrounded by fellow patients and a wealth of ersatz: fake potted plants, imitation leather chairs, chipboard end tables veneered to look like oak. He drank coffee from a polystyrene cup. The irony that he was here today to have his hip joint replaced with titanium, ceramic, and plastic was not lost on him. He laughed bitterly, but no one paid him any mind.

http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/mwwodarch.pl?Mar.30.2007

bucolic \byoo-KAH-lik\ adjective

Merle and I strolled across the Johnson acreage. My piss yellow '78 Scout had crapped out three, four miles back on Route 57. It was growing dark, and we were about twenty miles yet from town with nothing to keep us company except sage and a trio of the Johnson's horses out to pasture.
"Didn't you grow up on a ranch?" I asked my friend. He nodded his shaven, sun-burnt head. With that red head atop his scrawny neck, he looked more buzzard than man.
"Well, then," I said, "get your bucolic ass over there and rustle us up a horse."

http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/mwwodarch.pl?Mar.29.2007

inveigh \in-VAY\ verb

Mother was a noted sesquipedalian who would never use a ten cent word when she could employ a ten dollar word. I remember one morning, years ago now, when she said to me, "Inveigh all you want, but you are not wearing that skirt to school." I just laughed at her and poor Mother's face, since she had no idea that I was laughing at her diction rather than her demand, turned all blotchy red.

http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/mwwodarch.pl?Mar.28.2007

corrigendum \kor-uh-JEN-dum\ noun

Constable John Williams stood outside the door of the printer's house, waiting for a small detachment of his men to arrive. They were to arrest the man for corrupting the corrigendum of the new property rights bill from the Commons. He had taken the opportunity, among all the corrections, to add a provision that barred foreigners from purchasing new lands within the Commonwealth. Likely the King, who was a well-known xenophobe, was behind the printer's audacious act. The King would no doubt pardon the printer as soon as John had arrested the man. And so John found himself caught yet again between the political machinations of Commons and King.

http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/mwwodarch.pl?Mar.27.2007

panoply \PAN-uh-plee\ noun

We Spartans lined up before the Theban hoplites, and we did not fear their sharp-bladed spears nor their spindles nor their swords. Our shields formed a wall and we were as a wall, a wall of brothers. I knew that my own spear would pierce the Theban panoply in the thick of the crack and thunder of our meeting, just as I knew my brothers' would strike through to the hearts of our enemy.

http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/mwwodarch.pl?Mar.26.2007

Welcome

Hi,

My name is Brian Richard Wade, and I'm a writer living in Columbus, OH. I'm currently in the Ohio State creative writing MFA program, and I'm at work on my first novel. This blog is going to be non-standard. It will be a short bit of daily writing to get the creative ichor flowing though my vital parts. I'm going to use the word sent to me via Merriam-Webster's WotD site as my prompt for each session. Read if you wish, comment if you must.


-brian