How oddly rewarding it is to dip into a book of mystifying new words every day as part of my Lexicon Big Year. Steven Poole’s A Word for Every Day of the Year is superb. Imagine then my delight in reading, at the same time, this year’s Miles Franklin winner, The Yield by Tara June Winch! One of the artful narrative devices employed by the award winning author is to interleave the story with an expanding lexicon/dictionary of indigenous words, specifically over a hundred (so 30% of Poole’s word digging, but still substantive) Wiradjuri words or phrases. Words are magical.