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.
This week I’m reading the winner of the 2011 Costa Novel Award, Pure by Andrew Miller.
It’s set in Paris just prior to the Revolution and I have a number of new words to check out.
Definitions come from the free dictionary.
Escritoire – “He glides to the gleaming walnut of the escritoire, removes from one of its drawers a little picture in a frame…”
Obviously it’s a piece of furniture, but I like to have a picture in my mind.
2. A desk with a top section for books.
A WILLIAM AND MARY WALNUT ESCRITOIRE ON STAND CIRCA 1700
Charnel – “They start with the south charnel, a gallery of blackened stone adjacent to the rue de la Ferronnerie.”
2. Translucent; clear.
bronasbooks.com 
I knew escritoire from the little bit of French I can remember. I've never seen baroque used like that either – interesting!
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Baroques sounded familiar to me, I never heard of the others.http://tributebooksmama.blogspot.com/2013/05/wondrous-words-wednesday.html
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Escritoire is fancy looking and sounding! I enjoyed your words this week.
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Hi Brona,I knew all of your words this week, with the exception of 'lucency'. Actually, I was quite impressed with myself, as memories of my schoolday French lessons obviously haven't deserted me entirely!I was intrigued by the cover art of 'Pure' and decided to check it out. I have to say that I was even more intrigued by the Amazon synopsis and have subsequently added this one to my reading list, so thanks for the introduction.Interesting post this week,Yvonne
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What lovely words Brona. I knew all of them to some extent- lucency was the one I knew best. I'd forgotten charnel house. That was a new usage for baroques for me too.
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My husband inherited a beautiful writing desk from his father's mother. How nice to have this lovely new word to go with it. I like escritoire better than writing desk.
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