Miévillians discussion
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Glossary of unusual words to be found in CM's writings
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I used to speak German, but the German origin of immer hadn't occurred to me until we discussed it in the group read, and I would guess that as an "in-story" explanation, you're right. But I also imagine that CM chose it at least in part because of that German meaning.Edit: right - I'd forgotten the manchmal
I'd really love to get a look at his editor's stylesheets!
Ok, if 'tor' means a rocky hill or mountain, why does CM say 'rock tors'? Why be redundant?
Maybe there are also spaghetti tors thanks to torque contamination. ;)
Where's my 'like' button! Hahahaha, good one, J.
To be quite honest, in part three of IC, I've come across a few sentences that made me do a double take because they simply do not make sense.Heh, yes the tor thing does appear to be a tautology.
Here another word in which CM may have wanted both meanings: deliquesce. 1. To melt away2. botany to form many small divisions or branches.
In the hard red light of dawn the leaves and vines dandled in the current seemed to deliquesce, to be run off streams of dye, matter adrip into meltwater.
Concatenate is really not a strange word if you've done any computer programming, but CM is using it in a context in which I hadn't seen it used before.Dictionary says:
1. To connect or link in a series or chain.
2. Computer Science To arrange (strings of characters) into a chained list.
CM uses it in IC as follows:
The child dips its hand with the grace of its species. Its fingers are radial from its little palm, a star. It clenches in its way: hinges its tapered digits like the petals of a closing flower, into a point. Nails concatenate, its hand become a spearhead.
Ruth wrote: "Here another word in which CM may have wanted both meanings: deliquesce. 1. To melt away2. botany to form many small divisions or branches.
In the hard red light of dawn the leaves and vines dan..."
Oh, yeah! Vintage Miéville.
Oh yes! That dripping deliquescence with vines dandling in the red-dyed light of dawn is delicious indeed! :)
anamnesis (title of part 4, Iron Council)1. the recollection or remembrance of the past; reminiscence.
2. (Platonism) recollection of the Ideas, which the soul had known in a previous existence, especially by means of reasoning.
3. (Immunology) a prompt immune response to a previously encountered antigen, characterized by more rapid onset and greater effectiveness of antibody and T cell reaction than during the first encounter, as after a booster shot in a previously immunized person.
Way too-long absent from this thread, considering it's something that's fascinated me since joining this group! Great that we've got CM's "regulars" on here plus some new ones! Avid linguomancers that we are ...I'm going to have to go back and look up highlights or try to remember from past reads. But for Iron Council, I've been highlighting a lot of words on my kindle, mostly cause I had to look them up. Some are really cool and relevant though. Here is the unabridged list, sans most definitions. I'll come back and add some later.
Deliquesce
Corticate
Excrescence
Corbelled
Sarky
Juddering
Wastrel
Autarky
Parvenus
Porcine
Gurned
Montane
Desultory (knew this one but wow does he like to use it)
Stravager
Intermitted (verb form of intermittent that I never thought to use but seems useful)
Ungulate
Neonate (come on, why not use childlike, he's just making us run to a dictionary now)
Canaille
Loquacious (see desultory...)
Inchoate
Beneficence (probably more common than I think, but way cool)
Banausic
Insouciance (again, see desultory, and every other CM novel...)
Farouche
Intransigent
Mendicant
Pullulate
Indurates
Commonalty (did a double take on this, thought commonality at first but it's not)
Glossolalia (speaking another language for religious purposes like in Pentecostal and charismatic Christian faiths, which I grew up around - we called it speaking in tongues - but who but CM knew it had its own word)
And my favorite ... gewgaw: Showy thing, especially something useless or worthless. It's a noun from the Middle English, but he uses it as an adjective.
Speaking of which, I know some have expressed interest in how CM uses words, and in particular I love his choice-use of nouns. Ran across his descriptive paragraph of Fallybeggar's Hall where he a "slick of vagabonds" and a "clot of men" ... Nice.
Insouciance and mendicant are words he seems to love along with palimpsest and puissance.I got my daughter to try and read Un-Lun-Dun, but his vocab there is way above even her very advanced for her age vocab.
You'd think he would at least try to simplify things a bit for kids in his kid's novel... :P
I remember "parvenu" (pretty sure I posted it somewhere above) from Railsea.And I recall doing the same double-take over commonalty.
I was Evangelical Anglican as a teenager, Allen (I'm certain that's an oxymoron), and we actually used the word glossolalia!
I don't know if you'd still expect it of most British readers, but those older than me (and who finished their schooling there—I left at 11) would be able to figure out words like neonate from the Latin roots. North American education is sadly lacking :)
Sarky is English slang.
I had a whole list of words to add from IC, but they're on my now dead Kobo...
Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "I remember "parvenu" (pretty sure I posted it somewhere above) from Railsea.And I recall doing the same double-take over commonalty.
I was Evangelical Anglican as a teenager, All..."
Yeah, I may highlighted some slang. Like sarky. As for commonalty, I'm finding it difficult to say, or even think-say. There's more references now in the Ori chapters :)
I've seen commonalty before, but I can't think where.
theres some delightful curses in Kraken that could belong here: shitfoxes, spitfish and fucklizards
cuntwasps and wanktoasters on p293 of my hc copy and as for fuckity shite, i can hardly wait for the right occassion to try it in public
He really does cuss a lot in Kraken, even for Mieville. Maybe inspired by abreligious fervor? Teehee.
Its that renegade Cunningham and those foul mouthed cultists!Now how about this sentence p 300
Symbiote was a crash course in realtheologie
Spectacular thread! Quite useful specially for non native English speakers like me.
Miévillians
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Railsea (other topics)Railsea (other topics)
Iron Council (other topics)
Perdido Street Station (other topics)
The Human Blend (other topics)
2. a person, esp a European, who has made a large fortune in India or another country of the East.) but the second all I can find is 'force'.