Quandry of Quondam — Wondrous Words Wednesday

An English country house party featuring academics dressed in historical costume who want to restore Richard III’s reputation

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.”