valetudinarian

When I was a kid, and ran out of things to read, I would pick up the dictionary, try to increase my vocabulary. Granted, I didn't pick up that many to use in most every-day conversations, but I could generally kick butt in Scrabble.

This blog has a feed down a bit in the left-hand navbar, a Word of the Day from Dictionary.com, and I've never heard of today's entry, valetudinarian

From the website:

valetudinarian \val-uh-too-din-AIR-ee-un
noun:1. A weak or sickly person, especially one morbidly concerned with his or her health.
adjective:1. Sickly; weak; infirm.2. Morbidly concerned with one's health.

I loved this example they gave:

Other than the Holy Scripture, he cared for no book as well as the book of decay, its truths written in the furrows scored on the brows of old men and women; in the sagging timbers of decrepit barns; in the lichenous masonry of derelict buildings; in the mangy fur of a valetudinarian lion.
-- Simon Schama, Rembrandt's Eyes

I can use that in a sentence:

"I was the valetudinarian of my senior class."