Queereaders discussion

I love words and am always on the lookout for new interesting words. Often when reading I see an uncertain word and get the general meaning from the context, but don't really get the nuances of special words from context. I like to write these down, look them up and use them so I don't forget.

The most recent has been the wonderful word Scapegrace from Janny Wurts series War of Light and Shadow.

I thought it might be fun and educational to post and discuss a cord and try to use them in our posts. Besides one thing that correlates most with 'intelligence' is one's vocabulary.

I'll start with a word most of us have heard and used, Gay related. I am surprised how old the word is:

Camp, Campy

camp, adj. and n.5
Pronunciation:
  /kæmp/
Etymology:  Etymology obscure.
slang.
 A. adj. 
  Ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical; effeminate or homosexual; pertaining to or characteristic of homosexuals.
1909    J. R. Ware Passing Eng. 61/2   Camp (Street), actions and gestures of exaggerated emphasis. Probably from the French. Used chiefly by persons of exceptional want of character. ‘How very camp he is.’
1933    M. Lincoln Oh! Definitely vi. 62   Dennis, slightly more ‘camp’ than usual, opened the front door.
1941    S. J. Baker Pop. Dict. Austral. Slang 16   Camp (adj.), homosexual.
1952    A. Wilson Hemlock & After i. v. 101   The‥gossip of the golden spiv group…the ‘camp’ end of the room.
1952    A. Wilson Hemlock & After iii. i. 191   Whether Terence was really ‘queer’‥how much happier he was when he was not being ‘camp’.
1954    C. Beaton Glass of Fashion viii. 153   Hearty naval commanders or jolly colonels acquired the ‘camp’ manners of calling everything from Joan of Arc to Merlin ‘lots of fun’, and the adjective ‘terrible’ peppered every sentence.
1956    L. McIntosh Oxf. Folly vii. 103   ‘He was—you know—one of those’‥‘What, a pansy?’ ‘That's right,’ said Julian, ‘he was camp.’
1959    Observer 1 Feb. 17/1   The cute little dirty chuckle and the well-timed ‘camp’ gesture have made stage and audience indistinguishable from any would-be-smart cocktail-party.
(Hide quotations)
 
 B. n.5
  ‘Camp’ behaviour, mannerisms, etc. (see quot. 1909 at sense A.); a man exhibiting such behaviour.
1909 [see sense A.].
1931    New Broadway Brevities (N.Y.) ii. 7/1 (heading)    Drags, camps, flaunting hip-twisters and reefer peddlers run afoul of cops on the lam.
1952    A. Wilson Hemlock & After ii. i. 112   The incoherence of his speech, the‥absence of the customary ‘camp’.
1954    C. Isherwood World in Evening ii. iii. 125   High Camp is the whole emotional basis of the Ballet‥and of course of Baroque art.
1964    S. Sontag in Partisan Rev. XXXI. 515 (title)    Notes on ‘Camp’.

This from the OED - Do these definitions correlate with your understanding of camp?

Kernos; You're not the only one, I do the same. The wall above my desk is peppered with post-its that I have written my "new" words on. Embarrassingly enough, often I look up a word I thought I knew only to find I didn't quite have the right definition.
A new one for me today was to amortise and I can thank Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman for it!

Another word I've been trying to use is jejune. Opportunities are not the common, but I think it a wonderful word. I hear Jeremy Irons using the word in Brideshead Revisited

jejune, adj.

Pronunciation:
  /dʒiːˈdʒuːn/
Etymology:  < Latin jējūn-us fasting.
†1. Without food, fasting; hungry. Obs.

a1619    M. Fotherby Atheomastix (1622) ii. ii. §2. 199   When their Bellies are distended, and full; yet their appetites are ieiune, and emptie.
1670    J. Beale in Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc.) 5 1162   Poor and jejune people, who are accustomed to drinks almost as weak as water.
a1754    J. McLaurin Serm. & Ess. (1755) 156   That cold, jejune, lifeless frame.

 
 2. Deficient in nourishing or substantial (physical) qualities; thin, attenuated, scanty; meagre, unsatisfying; (of land) poor, barren.

1646    Sir T. Browne Pseudodoxia Epidemica iii. xxi. 162   Jejune or limpid water, and nearer the simplicity of its Element.
a1652    J. Smith Sel. Disc. (1660) v. iii. 135   Those jejune and insipid morsels.
1696    W. Whiston New Theory of Earth (1722) iv. 352   They might never see such a Poor, Jejune, and Degenerate State of the Vegetable Kingdom.
1708    J. Philips Cyder i. 54   Not from the sable ground expect success, Nor from cretaceous, stubborn and jejune.
1833    J. Rennie Alphabet Sci. Angling 5   That they [fish] are best pleased with such jejune diet may easily be confuted.
 
 3. a. Unsatisfying to the mind or soul; dull, flat, insipid, bald, dry, uninteresting; meagre, scanty, thin, poor; wanting in substance or solidity. Said of thought, feeling, action, etc., and esp. of speech or writing; also transf. of the speaker or writer. (The prevailing sense.)

1615
[implied in: E. Hoby Curry-combe ii. 100   The Knight saw how Ieiunely his Aduersary pleaded for Purgatory. [at jejunely adv.]
1647    H. More Philos. Poems ii. iii. i. xiii,   Jejune exilities.
a1652    J. Smith Sel. Disc. (1660) ii. 36   A forcʼd and jejune devotion, void of inward Life and Love.
1656    W. S. Bullokar's Eng. Expositor (rev. ed.) (at cited word),   When we say of an Oration, Sermon, or any Discourse, that it is Jejune, we mean, sory, paltry, and veryordinary stuffe.
1671    R. Bohun Disc. Wind 49   Have employed so much time in such empty and jejune speculations.
c1705    G. Berkeley Commonplace Bk. in Wks. (1871) IV. 478   The short jejune way in mathematiques will not do in metaphysiques.
1758    Blackstone in Comm. I. 16   He gives what seems‥a very jejune and unsatisfactory reason.
1818    H. Hallam View Europe Middle Ages (1872) I. 395   The chroniclers of those times are few and jejune.
 
 b. Puerile, childish; also, naïve.
¶ This use may owe its origin to the mistaken belief that the word is connected with Latin juvenis young (compar. junior), or French jeune young.

1898    G. B. Shaw Arms & Man ii. 29   His jejune credulity as to the absolute value of his concepts.
1975    Economist 22 Nov. 14/1   Is anybody‥now so jejune as not to realise that the state ownership of the deadweight of present nationalised industries must prevent Labour governments from being able to follow‥their social policies.
1982    N.Y. Times Mag. 8 Aug. 10   Other people‥write in to correct you if you define the word‥‘jejune’ as ‘childish’.
1982    M. Howard Eppie (1983) xxxiii. 271   Mother seemed jejune, at times, with her enthusiasms and her sense of mission.
 
†4.   jejune gut n. = jejunum n. Obs.
1696    E. Phillips New World of Words (ed. 5) ,   Jejune Gut, the second of the small Guts, so called, because it is frequently empty.