The second page of Elizabeth Peters’ The Murders of Richard III stumped me with quondam:
He had private reasons for wanting Jacqueline Kirby to develop an interest in Richard III, quondam king of England, who had met a messy death on the field of battle almost five hundred years earlier.
According to my Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (1979), quondam is from a Latin word meaning formerly and is equivalent to former.
That wasn’t very satisfying to me — why not just use the simpler and more straightforward former? So I logged into the Oxford English Dictionary from the library’s website and got a more satisfying definition for quondam:
The former holder of an office or position; (Oxford Univ.) a former Fellow of All Souls College. Also derogatory: a person who has been deposed or ejected.
That definition makes this quondam the best word choice in the mouth of an academic talking about much-maligned King Richard III, who stands accused of murdering his two nephews.
Wondrous Words Wednesday is hosted by Bermudaonion’s Weblog. Kathy says: “Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where we share new (to us) words that we’ve encountered in our reading.”