Wondrous Words. Words New To Me #3

Wondrous Words. Words New To Me #3 comes really soon after the second one, but I wanted to share two words I learned while at Oxford and a new one, so this was the best time to do it. The first word comes from Kamala Harris’ book, her memoir that I finished last month. I imagine it is a word widely known, but it was new for me. The other two are from Oxford, panopto is how our lecture page is called  for seeing online lectures. The last word is used for our online signing-in process. Not all of my colleagues knew the last word, so it might be new for my readers too.

Wondrous Words. Words New To Me #3

truancy is any intentional, unjustified, unauthorized, or illegal absence from compulsory education. It is a deliberate absence by a student’s own free will and usually does not refer to legitimate excused absences, such as ones related to medical conditions.

panoptic means seeing everything or all things at once, a birds’ eye view.

shibboleth is any custom or tradition, usually a choice of phrasing or even a single word, that distinguishes one group of people from another.

From these three I will use the first one as I read it a few times in her book and learned it. It is also a word I might use in everyday conversation considering its meaning. Panoptic(al) is a word I used before and I like. The only one I don’t think I’m going to use is shibboleth because it feels a bit strange. I might change my mind about it though.

If you want to know more about the Wondrous Words series, check Yvonne’s posts at fiction-books and the linky, which is hosted by Mareli at elzareads.

Do you know and/or use these words?



4 thoughts on “Wondrous Words. Words New To Me #3”

  • I definitely knew truancy and panoptic makes sense since I know many other words using “pan” (pandemic, pantheon, Panhellenic, etc).

    Shibboleth is one of those words I feel like I’ve heard before, but could never have put a definition to. It’s not one I think would be easy to work into casual conversation!
    Kelly recently posted…Lawn Mower RaceMy Profile

    • Shibboleth is quite hard to incorporate in a sentence in a casual conversation indeed. I thought of that too. :))

  • Hi Anca, I could have probably taken a good guess at ‘panoptic’, but it is always good to know the exact definition of a word. I really like the word ‘shibboleth’ and that you have also included an example of how the word might be used, I must try that out soon! ‘Truancy’ is a word I know well (not from personal experience I hasten to add 🙂 ), I actually thought it was still in use in schools, however I guess the PC term these days would probably be ‘unauthorised absence’, how times have changed! Great words this time, thanks for sharing 🙂

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