La Gaudière
n.
a glint of goodness you notice in someone that you wouldn’t expect, which is often only detectable by sloshing them back and forth in your mind until everything dark and gray and common falls away, leaving something shining at the bottom of the pan—a rare element hidden deep in the bedrock, that must’ve been washed there by a storm somewhere upstream.
French la gaudière, from Latin gaudere, to find joy. Pronounced “lah gou-dee-yair.”
