As a lot of this blog is about writing, I wanted to write a regular article on my favourite forgotten words. You know the type of thing, those poor lost words that sit at the back of our minds, gathering dust, having been discovered years ago in literary classics like Dickens, or Austen. They are the spices of the literary world, but I refuse to let them sit in a cupboard and be ignored until they go out of date! Let’s bring them back!
This month’s word is: BOSCAGE
Boscage
A mass of trees or shrubs.
This was another word I’d never heard of. Ever! I’ve never heard my parents say it, or anyone else for that matter, I’ve never read it anywhere either. So, a boscage is a mass of trees or shrubs. For example, ‘As I walked up the long, winding driveway, the house was obscured by a boscage.’
Isn’t it a fab word though? It makes me wonder why I didn’t know of it before. I read a lot of golden age crime and you’d think it’d be in there. It seems like a word Agatha Christie would use. But never mind, we know it now! So my challenge to you is to get it into a sentence today. Or better yet, for all you scribblers out there, use it as a prompt for a short story!
Let me know how you get on!