I just found the word MENDICANT in the John D. McDonald novel Bright Orange for the Shroud.
Similar to mendicant: living by begging, begging, cadging, scrounging, sponging, mooching.
From the same novel, I found PEDANTIC, of or like a pedant: "many of the essays are long, dense, and too pedantic to hold great appeal."
Similar: scrupulous, precise, exact, perfectionist, precisionist, punctilious.
I'd seen the word ARROYO in Louis L'Amour books about the old west, and now I found it in a McGee novel. It's a steep-sided gully formed by the action of fast-flowing water in an arid or semi-arid region, found chiefly in the southwestern US.
Similar: gorge, abyss, canyon, ravine, gully, gulf, pass, crevasse, cleft.
McGee just used the word SILICOSIS. Silicosis is a lung disease caused by inhaling tiny crystalline particles of silicon dioxide (silica). Its symptoms are coughing, inflammation(swelling) and fibrosis (scarring).
McGee's newest word is AVUNCULAR. It means kind and friendly towards a younger or less experienced person. "He was avuncular, reassuring, and trustworthy."
Similar: paternal, fatherlike, protective, supportive, encouraging.
McGee mentioned COQUINA rock.
Coquina is a sedimentary rock that is composed either wholly or almost entirely of the transported, abraded, and mechanically sorted fragments of mollusks, trilobites, brachiopods, or other invertebrates. The term coquina comes from the Spanish word for "cockle" and "shellfish".
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