English Major Word-of-the-Day
parturition
SYLLABICATION: par·tu·ri·tion
PRONUNCIATION: 
pär
ty
-r
sh
n, -t-, pärch-
NOUN: The act or process of giving birth; childbirth.
"Not infrequently, as we'll see, the undertaking to reparent, as it were, or "reissue" the bastard infant of (what is presented as) [Henry] James's juvenilia is described simply as male parturition." --Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick on Henry James's New York edition prefaces in Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity.
I like Sedgwick so far, but nonetheless found myself giggling when I came upon this use of the word "eventuation":
"By 1907, though, when the volumes of the New York edition were beginning to appear, James's theatrical self-projection was sufficiently healed that he had actually begun a new round of playwrighting and negotiations with producers--eventuating, indeed, in performance."
