Wondrous Words Wednesday

When I finish swimming my laps I like to laze for half an hour or so by the edge of the pool. (It's so nice that the boys are now old enough that I can do this several times a week quite easily!)

Over the past couple of months my poolside read has been Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma.

As many of you know, Michael Pollan et al, Slow Food, eating ethically and the philosophy of food are interests of mine.

This blog was started, in part, to cater for this interest/obsession. (Food, philosophy and photography should be my byline!)

There are so many ideas, provocations and insights into the way we eat food in The Omnivore's Dilemma that I will be digesting them for years to come!

But for now....a few troubling words.


1. Plein-air

"It's not hard to see how a plein-air abattoir like this might give a USDA inspector conniptions."

Definition courtesy of wikipedia: En plein air is a French expression which means "in the open air", and is particularly used to describe the act of painting outdoors.

2. Encomiums

"I could have filled a notebook with the encomiums."

Encomium is a Latin noun derived the Classical Greek meaning a speech or piece of writing that praises someone or something highly.

3. Inchoate

"all this suggested that for many of these people spending a little more for a dozen eggs was a decision inflected by politics, however tentative or inchoate."

I have a rough idea about the meaning of this one from it's context (inarticulated?), but I've always wanted to know how to pronounce it.

Isn't google wonderful?  Dictionary.com has an audio button so you can hear any word pronounced as well as defining the word for you.

So we pronounce it: "In-co-et"

And it means:
Adj: 1. not yet completed or fully developed; rudimentary.

        2. just begun; incipient.

        3. not organized; lacking order

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a lovely meme hosted by Bermuda Onion each week to highlight new (to us) words that we come across in our daily reading.