Using Word of the Day

Kris wrote:
I get the Oxford English Dictionary Word of the Day in my email. Sometimes, they send boring, common words, sometimes they send whimsical words (like the word "beamy"), but every once in a while, they send a special word, a word that perhaps 5 people in the whole world have heard of, truly obscure words that teach History, or provide a new way to describe something. Today was one of those days. This words made me think of Imogen Crest over at the Hermitage, as
these Nitrian's are her ancient kin. Enjoy

Kris

Nitrian, a. DRAFT REVISION Dec. 2003

Brit. /ntrn/, U.S. /ntrin/ [< the name of the region of Nitria (Byzantine Greek (4th cent.), Hellenistic Greek (Strabo)) in Egypt + -AN.

The modern site of the monasteries is the Wadi Natrun (Arabic Wd al-Narn, lit. `valley of natron') : see etymological note s.v. NITRE n. and cf. NATRON n.]

Of, relating to, or designating the desert region of Nitria, to the west of Cairo in Egypt, esp. as the place of settlement of a group of ascetic Christian hermit monks in the 4th cent.

1684 Philos. Trans. Royal Soc. 14 613 There is a town in Ægypt called Nitria which gives its name to the nitrian Desert. 1867 C. M. YONGE Pupils of St. John ix. 149 Christians..are said to have preferred the Nitrian valley because of the words of Jeremiah`though thou wash thee
with nitre'.

1888 Dict. National Biogr. XIII. 325/2 The most celebrated discovery which Cureton made among the Syriac manuscripts in the Nitrian collection was that of the famous Epistles of St. Ignatius to Polycarp. 1892 I. G. SMITH Christian Monasticism vii. 186 In the famous monastery of St. Gall, in Switzerland, as in the Nitrian monasteries of the fifth century, the whip..was suspended from a pillar in the chapter-house. 1904 J. O. HANNAY Wisdom of Desert 6 At the end of the fourth century the Nitrian mountains were dotted over with hermits' cells. 1958 L. DURRELL Balthazar iv. 80 His mind wingedaway like a swallow across the dunes into the Nitrian desert itself. 2002 Weekend Austral. (Nexis) 3 Aug. 13 The desert fathers in the
Nitrian desert never left their holy habitations, and while people came out to them, and some stayed on, the call of the world they had abandoned never pulled them back.

Doesn't Nitria sound like a mysterious, fantastical place, the kind that can only be reached through wardrobes or faraway trees?

Use Nitria as the setting of an adventure story!