Sunday, October 24, 2010

Caught By Curiosity Again

I wasn't going to nibble on Retriever's posts on pressure cookers and butternut squash. Uh - uh. Not that kind of blog. I'm sure she's more interesting than most on those topics, but I stayed away.

But that title about Minevars and Frescoes kept begging to have its link followed. I didn't know what minevars are...and anything about frescoes might be worth knowing...and she's likely pulled out something I won't find anywhere else...

And at minimum, there will be a remarkable photograph at the top.

Retriever had to search to find out what minevars were. When I had the answer, I asked my wife if she knew - because Tracy is simply phenomenal on vocabulary in general, and specifically the objects that might somehow show up in an historical novel. She knew it, from a book title Scarlet and Minevar, and guessed it was some kind of fur.

I checked with a search engine, found that the book is A Taste For Scarlet and Minevar, and it shows up for exactly one hit, plus the two Retriever heroically unearthed from sources which define obscure.

No one plays more than one night of the dictionary game with Tracy, because it becomes too irritating and time-consuming to find a word she doesn't know. You have to go into the specialised vocabulary of a discipline to catch her up. As the theater and speech major, I provide the pronunciation, even if I've never known the meaning. It's a symbiosis we have had since about our second date.

Ad oh yeah, that was pretty interesting about the frescoes.

4 comments:

Retriever said...

Thanks, but I will pass on the kind words..not me, but my special guest blogger...

Kitten said...

Is there an alternate spelling of "miniver", and does it refer to ducal robes? Your wife has my sympathy regarding word games. I love the game Balderdash but don't play beacause I can remember the definitions, at least a good enough sense of them, that it would be cheating for me to get a word I've had in a previous session.

Kitten said...

Maybe I should clarify. Does "Scarlet and Miniver" refer to ducal robes.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

I think minever is ermine. Has to be related