Jonas David's Blog, page 3

new words – killy and crewelwork

I’m putting killy here because it’s new to me, and in a sentence that I like, however I’m not sure this is really a word. I can’t find a definition for it anywhere that makes sense. All I could find was an alternate spelling of killie, which is a kind of fish, but that doesn’t fit with the word’s use.

Crewel is more clear – slackly twisted worsted yarn used for embroidery

Here’s the sentence, still from The Orchard Keeper:

“And the sun running red on the mountain, high killy and stoop of a kestrel hunting, morning spiders at their crewelwork.”

new words – gibbet and trichinella

I through trichinella may be related to trichinosis, which is a disease I’d heard of, and I was right, that is a disease caused by the nematode of the family trichinella. Note this is only two pages after the previous post. This book is loaded with interesting words.

Gibbet – a gallows. Gibbeted – to expose to infamy or public scorn, or to execute by hanging on a gibbet.

Trichinella – a genus of nematode worms comprising the trichinae

And here is the end of a long sentence, yet again from The Orchard Keeper:

“…a meat market where hams and ribcages dangled like gibbeted miscreants and in the glass cases square porcelain trays piled with meat white-spotted and trichinella-ridden, chunks of liver the color of clay tottering up from moats of watery blood, a tray of brains, unidentifiable gobbets of flesh scattered here and there.”

new words – lintel, arabesque, crowstep, corbel, crocket

If you’re an architect or builder, you probably know these words. I’m not, and I didn’t. It’s a record number of new words in one sentence.

Lintel – a horizontal architectural member spanning and usually carrying the load above an opening

Arabesque – an ornament or style that employs flower, foliage, or fruit and sometimes animal and figural outlines to produce an intricate pattern of interlaced lines

Crowstep – any of a series of steps at the top of a gable wall

Corbel – an architectural member that projects from within a wall and supports a weight especially : one that is stepped upward and outward from a vertical surface

Crocket – an ornament usually in the form of curved and bent foliage used on the edge of a gable or spire

And here is the sentence, still in The Orchard Keeper:

“He was still standing on the sidewalk and now he saw the city, steamed and weaving in heat, and rising above the new facings of glass and tile the bare outlandish buildings, towering columns of brick adorned with fantastic motley; arches, lintels, fluted and arabesque, flowered columns and crowstepped gables, bay windows over corbels carved in shapes of feet, heads of nameless animals, Pompeian figures… here and there, gargoyled and crocketed, wreathed dates commemorating the perpetration of the structure.”

new words – palpitant and accipitral

Still in the first half of The Orchard Keeper, I continue to encounter these rare and lovely words.

Palpitant I guessed the meaning, because it seemed related to palpitate, but this suffix was new to me.

Palpitant – marked by trembling or throbbing.

Accipitral – resembling that of a hawk.

What luxury, to have such words at ones fingertips. I can’t wait to use them. Here is the sentence, describing a wounded sparrowhawk:

“It followed his movements as he approached and then turned its head when he reached out his hand to it, picked it up, feeling it warm and palpitant in the palm of his hand, not watching him, not moving, but only looking out over the valley calmly with its cold-glinting accipitral eyes, its hackles riffling in the wind.”

new words – coruscant

This one made me think of crepuscular, but it is almost the reverse of that, closer to lucent.

Coruscant – shining, brilliant

Still in The Orchard Keeper, only a couple pages from the previous post. Here is the sentence:

“Through the leaves of the hardwoods he could see the zinc-colored roof of the church faintly coruscant and a patch of boarded siding weathered the paper-gray of a waspnest.”

new words – brogan and moiling

Another two for the price of one sentence. It’s worth mentioning that all these posts so far have come from within only thirty pages or so of the same book.

Brogan – a coarse work shoe reaching to the ankle.

Moiling – the first definition is requiring hard work, but McCarthy uses the second definition: violently agitated, turbulent.

Moiling recalls roiling or boiling, either of which could have been used. But McCarthy’s style often calls for obscure or archaic words. Here is the sentence from The Orchard Keeper:

“When he came out on the road he turned down to the right, his brogans making small padding sounds in the red dust, his huge knobby-kneed trousers rolling and moiling about him urgently as if invested with a will and purpose of their own.”

new words – murrhine

Cormac McCarthy is one of many authors known to make up words, either by sticking two separate words together, or by using them in unusual ways. This is one example.

Murrhine means of, relating to, or made of murra, which is a material thought to be of semiprecious stone or porcelain used to make costly vessels in ancient Rome. But this isn’t exactly how McCarthy uses the word.

Instead he uses it as a verb, murrhined. You can think of this in the same way the word stoned can be used to describe someone who has been turned to stone.

Here is the sentence, yet again from The Orchard Keeper, describing a burning building:

“There it continued to burn, generating such heat that the hoard of glass beneath it ran molten and fused in a single sheet, shaped in ripples and flutings, encysted with crisp and blackened rubble, murrhined with bottlecaps.”

new words – rondelay

again from The Orchard Keeper, this is an alternate spelling of roundelay, which is a poem or song with a regularly recurring refrain. When it contains the words round, and delay, one can almost anticipate this meaning, especially given the context of the scene it was describing.

Here is the tail end of a long sentence:

“… the night went clamorous with hounds howling in rondelays, pained wailings as of phantom dogs lamenting their own demise.”

new words – suppurant

Continuing with my posts about new words – here is another one which is not only nice to look at, but seems to fit in shape and sound with its definition.

The root is suppurate – to form or discharge pus.

Here is the sentence, again from The Orchard Keeper. This is part of a description of someone dragging a body through the woods:

“His breath came back and he sat up a little, not hurting, only conscious of his hand hooked around the suppurant flesh.”

Does it not make you want to clear your throat and grimace, to imagine touching ‘suppurant flesh’? Even before looking up the word I had some idea from the context and the feel of it. It is a word whose utterance somehow casts a shadow of its meaning.

lovely words

As one who has been reading constantly for most of my life, I don’t often encounter new words anymore. Except, that is, when I read something by Cormac McCarthy.

I decided I should start keeping track of my favorites when I, today, encountered two new beauties in the same sentence.

Here they are:

Coomb (also spelled combe, or comb) – a narrow valley or deep hollow, especially one enclosed on all but one side.Threnody – a poem or song of mourning or lamentation.

And here is the sentence, from The Orchard Keeper:

“The coombs of the mountain fluted with hound voices, a threnody on the cooling air.”