Wondrous Words Wednesday (38)

Welcome back, wordy friends!

Wondrous Words Wednesday is hosted by BermudaOnion each week. It's an opportunity to share new words you've encountered in your reading, or highlight words that you particularly enjoy.

Here are three of my favorite new-to-me words from some of my recent reads.  All definitions from Dictionary.com.

1. soigné. "Where had these soigné children come from?"  (from Mama's Child by Joan Steinau Lester)  
adjective
1. carefully or elegantly done, operated, or designed.
2. well-groomed.

I love finding cool French words to use in everyday English.  This is one that I think would be pretty easy to drop into conversation.

2. inveterately (inveterate). "I also work here because I love books, because I'm inveterately curious, and because, like most librarians, I'm not well suited to anything else."  (from The World's Strongest Librarian by Josh Hanagarne)
adverb (adjective)
1. settled or confirmed in a habit, practice, feeling, or the like: an inveterate gambler.
2. firmly established by long continuance, as a disease, habit, practice, feeling, etc.: chronic.

This is one of those words that I've heard many times before, but never knew the exact definition.

3. hoary. "The hoary vassal in the sweater spoke for the first time."  (from The World's Strongest Librarian by Josh Hanagarne)

adjective

1. gray or white with age: an old dog with a hoary muzzle.
2. ancient or venerable: hoary myths.
3. tedious from familiarity; stale: Please don't tell that hoary joke at dinner again tonight.

Well, I was completely thrown off by this, because when I heard "hoary" all I could think of was "hoar frost", which means something entirely different.  (Stay tuned for next week when I tell you what 'vassal' means!)

What are your new words this week?