Words

This quote made me think again about Rick's marvelous Vegas book

'One must draw everything one can from words, because it’s the one real treasure a true writer has. Big general ideas are in yesterday’s newspaper. If I like to take a word and turn it over to see its underside, shiny or dull or adorned with motley hues absent on its upperside, it’s not at all out of idle curiosity, one finds all sorts of curious things by studying the underside of a word – unexpected shadows of other words, harmonies between them, hidden beauties that suddenly reveal something beyond the word. Serious wordplay, as I have in mind, is neither a game of chance nor a mere embellishment of style. It’s a new verbal species that the marvelling author offers to the poor reader, who doesn’t want to look; to the good reader, who suddenly sees a completely new facet of an iridescent sentence'. ( Nabokov )

'Words to me are but a plaything.'
-- Tommy Smothers

This has been running through my head for hours tonight:

Hear about the dead adjective?
Verbatim.

Word threads can go on forever. I will start with one of my favorite words:

fungus

>3 RickHarsch: lol

Today's word, first fun one to come to mind:

trollop

angus

A word I never saw before until last night: tramontane

A rare gem.

One of our winds here in the northern Adriatic region is the tramontana...Violent, occasionally spawns tornadoes, lasts around 20 minutes, summer storm wind from the north.

presumably called thus because the wind is from the mountains, sucked down by the rising heat...

phocine

commentary: many of these, like soricine, though nice to know and fun to use, could as far as the sound goes mean anything at all

Of course, it is words such as this, too, that Garcia Marquez would have chastized teachers for expecting children to learn how to spell them. I am with him entirely in regard to spelling being an unnecessary torture. No one should be forced to learn to spell against their will. But English spelling with all its quirks leads to much delight in both writing and reading. A guy who recently reviewed Eddie Vegas remarked on my expansive vocabulary--if only he knew how many words I use that I only know for a brief spell. If he asked me the meaning of all the words in that novel that he didn't know, I might not know half of them. I remember fremescent, though.

fremescent

succour

To come to succour us, that succour want?

from The faerie Queene

Ah, that lost world. Today it's You come to suck or what? The present is brutal.

On a more serious note, isn't that question mark odd there?

Its all part of Edmund Spenser cunning plan to involve the reader

the rest of the stanza is

How oft do they with golden pineons, cleave
The flitting skyes, like flying Pursuivant,
Against foul feends to aide us militant?

I never trusted that geezer

geezer

fartissimo

agapemone

homoscedasticity

agape

Greek words are the best. Taken from the notes to my third novel: Omphaloskepsis

innate

in nates

in Nejc (Slovene name)

Bolide

(bolibidinous)

Merriam webster define katabasis and anabasis as follows,

katabasis : a going or marching down or back : RETREAT
especially : a military retreat

anabasis : from the retreat of Greek mercenaries in Asia Minor described in the Anabasis of Xenophon : a difficult and dangerous military retreat

But they are the opposite, not ?

Along with Black Spring I found the Collosus of Maroussi in which Henry Miller explores the philosophical meanings and implications of katabasis, which means to descend (in order to gain something like liberation) (much like the essence of Tantric Hinduism)...The bora/burja is a katabatic wind, air sucked down form cold mountain heights when hot air over water (usually) rises...

Who was Merriam Webster anyway? Was she of the Lexington Websters?

disciplitude

And with this post, the brand new Anal-retentives group moves into the top ten most active on Library Thing!

innate, innit?

scorch

Another one from Miss Mac: fuliginous

galoot

ferment

fremescent

(2 for 1 on Sundays)

>26 Macumbeira:

Xenophon's book is named for the march "up country" that preceded the retreat.

I don't think I've ever seen it used to mean "retreat"; on the few times I've seen it used at all, it's been of military expeditions into the Asian hinterlands, specifically those of Cyrus the Younger (whom Xenophon accompanied), Alexander the Great, or Antiochos III.

quinsy

frottage

tippler

concomitant.

solipsist

sorelipissed

formicant

Hypogeum

Organon

Hamartia

skeptophilia

>45 baswood: hilarious

thought we might change the name of this group to Skeptophiliacs?

>47 baswood: I am pro !

hypogeal skeptophiliacs!

phocine

susurration

flatulence

Saw an interesting flick on the composition of the Oxford dictionary - The Professor and the Madman.

And you can't contribute a word?

casuistry

Nemes

nemes? in English?

sophistry

Sofaphile

grecophobe

>19 Crypto-Willobie: ....and heteroskedasticity too....

metacarpophalangeal cavitation

I'm very fond of squoyle which the OED defines by quotation thus:

"Squoyle in the New Forest..properly signifies a short stick loaded at one end with lead,..and is distinguished from a ‘snog’, which is only weighted with wood."
— J. R. Wise New Forest (1863)

pusillanimous

>61 librorumamans: Where I come from we scoff at the squoylees as we call them. We is snoggers!

pustulant, pusillanimous, psoreyeass squoylees

sludge

>60 alco261:

When I was three years old my statistician dad and his statistician friends thought it amusing to teach me to say 'homoscedasticity'. Not sure how well I did but thereafter it was a 'family word'...

>66 Crypto-Willobie: I had to look that up of course and then came to the conclusion that there are many words I will never understand

voluptuary

Voluptuary

>66 Crypto-Willobie: In my house words that started with homo were not allowed. To this day when I make a gay or lesbian friend I ask if I can call them homosexual.

Homo don't play dat...

zap

scrump (v.)

Scrumpral (adj)

bloviator

gasbag

scrump (v.)

Passing the Hendersons' orchard in that hot, heavy evening air, the boys hopped the fence to scrump among the trees, unable to resist the sweet scent of winesaps, empires, and spartans. They emerged a quarter hour later with bulging pockets and sticky chins. Jeremy, having stripped off and knotted the bottom of his t-shirt, nestled his haul in his arm, savouring its smell, as in later years he would each of his children, asleep having nursed their fill.

Despite his scrumpral past, Jeremy was vitamin deficient, a condition he attributed to having a man's name and a woman's milk sacs, though causals baffled him in their infinite jestrickery.

concupiscence

satyriasis

sapid

taradiddle

paradiddle

gibbon

fragglestickcar

rumpus

fribble

stalinovskovichdavidovitchsky

I dreamed hit afternoon (slept til 3pm) that I was head of a small state and met with Stalin.

pizda

kurac

kulak

cletter

bombazine is a twilled fabric

scoria

Psoriasis - very similar perhaps.

: )

I found scoria in Moby Dick, where it is used as geological "refuse" or "slag"

pus

clyster-pipe

suppuration

sanguinopurulence

clyster

tergiversation

treble

paynim

flap

flapula

frenulum

infundibuliform

wight

gerbil

whirliwig

whirligig

staunch

stanch

stench

fingent

finch

flinch

louche

coleoptera

coleoptile

coleoptile, alternate meaning, neologism, a beetle shaped lizard

coleoptophile

bug: "an insect of a large order distinguished by having mouthparts that are modified for piercing and sucking."

hoard

ermission

retromingent

Define backwards.

sdrawkcab, obviously!

wrong! It's enifed

Or is this just me in the grip of retromingency?

If that's the case, I suggest seeking immediate medical attention.

No need: I figured it out: just turned around...

Good thinking, as long as you're not overly callipygian!

A word for which I am grateful, as I recall, to Aldous Huxley.

mesopygian...one of my favorites because if you type it into google I'm in the first entry, from my first vocable entry in LT back in 2011. Previously my use of it in a novel had been noted as one of two literary examples of it by some obscure oddword site that I can no longer find. Probably it split in half and, well, you know...

as distinct from, say, hemipygian?

or homing pigeon

tippler

sot

guzzler

slut

crapulent

periodically

but not since the last time

sporadicity

impetrate

flocculent

integument

Brexit

autodismemberment

lqarl

autodidactyl

autopterodactyl

pterodactylant

pterodactylo

dactylosis

halitosis

I predicted that one.

Mephitis

decussate ≠ bowdlerize

scoria

Ricardo Scoria, I taught him in Trieste.

>159 RickHarsch: words?

Of course. Turning circle, a necessary collocation for budding navigators.

>161 RickHarsch:
I am reading the new Abulafia. Very good !
Not so good as your circumcision of Navigation, but close

These university tied folk never seem to get the genitalia that inflames the conflicting processes.

impertinent

rebarbative

I say if the barbative is off the first time, leave it be

rast

mickle

goanna

uniparous

primiparous

parous, france

porous pants

emunction

a mickle needs a muckle

deipnosophist

unbraste

lubricious

I love how, Mae-West-like, you can draw out the syllables of this word so that becomes in effect onomatopoeic.

harsch

pensum

skulking

ataraxy

Ochlocracy

prison

Escape

PERSIFLAGE

giddy

freshair

it's the little things one misses in the stir

ah, to read on the potty

my own tooth brush...

I miss my cell mate, that saucy gorilla

toxygen

sucking stones

The Beckett Cure (make of a free prison the whole of the near environment)

hurrah

supererogation

lepping

flabellifer

throes

grippe

epiphyte

ulotrichous

a fortiori

drugget

flocculent (see 203)

mediocrerogation

to prate

or not to

manstuprating manustuprating

Defenestrate

Sesquipedalian

gravid

bugaboos

glom

xertz

conundrums

Addumbdumb

wart

goiter

carbuncle

sociolect

Jugaad

jughead

jarhead

filth

blather

nincompoop

Pali

lingo

endoskeletal

mulct

mephitic

Callipygian

flak

klaf

kinnikinnik

we are sliding down a less intellectual slope

ha'porth

bole

stichomythia

gallimaufry

guerdon

contiguity

periplous

baffing

theophany

nemesis

extempore

proverbial

sparagmos

sumptuous

repetitive and loquacious and run-on and polysyndeton

cornucopia

loitering time

impercipient

hienal

semiosis

braggadocio

>259 Macumbeira: Character from the Faerie Queene, and so a word invented by Edmund Spenser?

festoon

>260 baswood: indeed. Word is quite popular in American politics

laterite

imponderable (a word I often think about)

kibitzer

off-ox

ornery

sumac

crass

carnivalesque

desquamate or have we already?

epideictic

alderliefest

balderdash

philoprogenitive

eupeptic

pullulate

Speaking of words, I recommend the movie The Professor and the Madman
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5932728/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_2
It is a bit light but interesting nevertheless

>278 Macumbeira: Interesting

>278 Macumbeira:

Better than the movie, the book on which it's based.

Better than either: Caught in the web of words : James A.H. Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary.

". . . I guess I am simply accustomed to dealing with more edulcorated versions of xenophobia."

Valeria Luiselli. Lost children archive, p. 124.

Droop

shellacking

frappe

tramp

scamp

crapulous

dahaga

antimacassar

bilious

adiposity

trapeze

pyrexia

agape

epoxy

lip

resin

detonate

gambit

gambite

gamebite

daddypose

and of course gambol.

Dare we get thematic? I was thinking of words that are utterly innocent but sound obscene....like daddypose.

ply

labellum

ligula

goose

quiddity

glace

pronity

traipse

esprit!

pronated (feet)

I vote pronity for the worst word so far.

patsy

A pronity to post the worst word? It does sound horrible, But I am going to use it three times tomorrow (when speaking English) to see if it produces raised eyebrows. Then I can say using pronity has a pronity to raise eyebrows.

ptyas

intrinsic

runt

turn

nutria

Antria

daedalian

I'm reading an analysis of a queer space by a cultural geographer. For this out-of-date old fart, it's a mine of bizarre jargon. I'll start with

catachresis

because a number of those words seem to be (mis)appropriated from other disciplines or from common use.

>325 librorumamans: I'm going to have to look these ones up. catachresis is a good start.

I'll tell you one thing, other than a three week attack of spinal ephesus a few years ago, an attack of catachresis was one of the most painful non-surgical events in my life.

dandle

sic

nit

One page of Anatomy of Melancholy to bolster the ol vocab:

Elixation

the action of boiling or seething...makes sense...elixir

assation

the act of baking or roasting

chylification

the formation of chyle

siccity

The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary. Click on a spelling suggestion below or try again using the search bar above.

ah: Noun
(uncountable)

Dryness.
Origin
From Latin siccitas, from siccus (“dry”).

chyle

that which is chylified

(or, lymph that is milky from emulsified fats, characteristically present in the lacteals, and most apparent during intestinal absorption of fats)

sublimation, calcination, rubification, encorporation, circination, sementation, albification, fermentation - it's all alchemy

It's allchemie?

speaking of Periplus: I found the beginning of a novel in an old notebook with two potential titles in it:
The Quietus of Spur Tank Road
The Periplus of Spur Tank Road

Spur Tank Road is an old and very interesting road in Chennai...

cupreous

apocrypha

philoprogenitive

misanthrantigenitive

valetudinarian

flagitious

fandango

alfalfa

flasher

freshet

desuetude

memeism

I found it in Celine. Looked it up. It's a made up word from the new favorite 'meme'. So Celine must have meant me me ism. (Which makes sense in context.)

irrefragable

isba (russian)

Faddists

word-mechanic is a journalist according to Robert Heinlein

excoriation

execration