Word: mots
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...little digging has given us, for example, "peduncles" in a press despatch referring to the space between two semi-circles side by side. A popular novelist unearthed "carapace" to give us one more synonym for "shell". Kipling, Conrad, and Meredith knew the value of the "mot juste" and have forced their readers to learn the value of the dictionary. When one starts out to enrich the vocabulary in this way the possibilities are limitless. See how a little diligence can improve the usual novel opening. "It was something akin to ataraxy that our heroine, aestivating amongst the alsike, observed that...
...Primerose" pleased and still pleases the audience by an irony without bitterness, a satire without anger, and an "indulgence" in which witticism and emotion are skillfully combined. It pleases more than all by its "esprit"-a light and brilliant sort of "esprit," crackling and sparkling which finds the right "mot" at the very second the spectator is waiting for a reason to accept...