Word of the Day...

Bildungsroman \BIL-doongz-roh-mahn\, noun:

A type of novel concerned with the education, development, and maturing of a young protagonist.

Unlike David Copperfield, The Catcher in the Rye is no Bildungsroman, because the narrator/protagonist doesn't want to grow up.
-- John Sutherland and Stephen Fender, Love, Sex, Death & Words

With its emphasis squarely on the diversity and latitude of lived experiences, Night Travellers unambiguously demonstrates its unease with the rigid providential scenario that pervades this kind of political Bildungsroman.
-- Yunzhong Shu, Buglers on the Home Front

Bildungsroman stems from the German word of the same spelling. The word bildung means "formation," and the word roman means "book."

vicinage \VIS-uh-nij\, noun:

1. The region near or about a place; vicinity.
2. A particular neighborhood or district, or the people belonging to it.
3. Proximity.

From the mansion itself, as well as from almost every cottage in the adjacent hamlet, arose such a rich cloud of vapoury smoke, as showed, that the preparations for the festival were not confined to the principal residence of Magnus himself, but extended through the whole vicinage.
-- Sir Walter Scott, The Waverly Novels

Herein resides, as I have hinted, the anxious and easy interest of almost any sincere man of letters in the mere vicinage, even if that be all, of such strained situations as Ray Limbert's.
-- Henry James, The Lesson of the Master

Vicinage stems from the Latin word vīcīn meaning "near."

Miracle (they are real...and come in many different shapes and sizes...and yes, some come from God, I truly believe)

concatenate \kon-KAT-n-eyt\, verb:

1. To link together; unite in a series or chain.

adjective:
1. Linked together, as in a chain.

While I began to immerse myself in this difficult new venture, the summer would bring in fresh distraction from my loneliness, and it is indeed curious how events concatenate.
-- John O'Meara, Defending Her Son

But when, as in this vintage, the conditions concatenate ideally, the result is - I'm sure you'll agree - vivid and appealing.
-- Stephen Fry, The Liar

Concatenate stems from the Latin word concatēnātus meaning "to link together

belletristic \bel-li-TRIS-tik\, adjective:

Related to literature regarded as a fine art, especially as having a purely aesthetic function.

Soon we were eagerly talking about our belletristic efforts. Butler was a short story writer who favored the “avant-garde” and who had translated several of Raymond Roussel's obscure “texts” into a stiff-jointed English. Lynne was writing a thesis on Max Jacob and his influence on Picasso.
-- Edmund White, The Farewell Symphony

Usually what I do is spread out my notebooks and Fielding's Guide to Worldwide Cruising 1995 and pens and various materials all over the bed, so when the Cabin Service guy appears at the door he'll see all this belletristic material and figure I'm working really hard on something belletristic right here in the cabin and have doubtless been too busy to have hit all the public meals and am thus legitimately entitled to the indulgence of Cabin Service.
-- David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

Belletristic is derived from the imported French phrase belles-lettres, which literally means "fine letters." It entered English in the early 1700s.

wonder if JK Rowling used the name Belletrix as one of her characters specifically to allude to this word..:dunno:

phthisis \THAHY-sis\, noun:

1. A wasting away.
2. Pulmonary tuberculosis; consumption.

At last Sister Hyacinthe began to speak of the immediate and complete cures of phthisis, and this was the triumph, the healing of that terrible disease which ravages humanity…
-- Robert Hugh Benson, Lourdes

Apoplexy is no longer to be feared, but phthisis is there. Social phthisis is called misery.
-- Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Phthisis comes from the Greek root phthí which meant "to decay."

fabulist \FAB-yuh-list\, noun:

1. A liar.
2. A person who invents or relates fables.

But at the same time, for fear of disruption and uncertainty, we attempt to relegate the maker's role to that of fabulist, equating fiction with lies and opposing art to political reality...
-- Alberto Manguel, The Voice of Cassandra

Nothing is off limits to this free-range fabulist. He can fold a dusty Persian carpet into the contours of the world itself and wring delight from every lustrous thread.
-- Clive Barker, The Essential Clive Barker

Fabulist is derived from the Middle French word fabuliste which referred to someone who told fables.

cacology \ka-KOL-uh-jee\, noun:

Defectively produced speech; socially unacceptable diction.

As to prose, I don't know Addison's from Johnson's; but I will try to mend my cacology.
-- Lord Byron, The Works and Letters of Lord Byron

Such cacology drives some people to distraction.
-- Linton Weeks, "R Grammar Gaffes Ruining the Language? Maybe Not", NPR

Cacology comes from the root caco- meaning "bad." This prefix occurs in loanwords from Greek. Similarly the suffix -logy is a combining form used in the names of sciences and bodies of knowledge.

diapason \dahy-uh-PEY-zuhn\, noun:

1. A full, rich outpouring of melodious sound.
2. The compass of a voice or instrument.
3. A fixed standard of pitch.
4. Either of two principal timbres or stops of a pipe organ, one of full, majestic tone (open diapason) and the other of strong, flutelike tone (stopped diapason).
5. Any of several other organ stops.
6. A tuning fork.

During the whole interval in which he had produced those diapason blasts, heard with such inharmonious feelings by the three auditors outside the screen, his thoughts had wandered wider than his notes in conjectures on the character and position of the gentleman seen in Ethelberta's company.
-- Thomas Hardy, The Hand of Ethelberta

And so those two, angry accuser and indifferent accused, faced each other for a moment; while, incessant, dull, might, the thunders of the great cataract mingled with the trembling diapason of the stupendous turbines in the rock-hewn caverns where old Niagara now toiled in fetters, to swell their power and fling gold into their bottomless coffers.
-- George Allan England, The Air Trust

Diapason was originally an abbreviation of the Greek phrase "hē dià pāsôn chordôn symphōnía" which meant "the concord through all the notes of the scale."