eloquent... exotic... esoteric... (please provide definitions)

[The Judge]

I know this is something that Teresa has written about in her blog (and probably on a thread, though I've not been able to find it quickly) but I thought it was opportune to raise it here with a slight twist.

We are writers. We seek to create worlds in which can our readers can become immersed, with characters to be admired, reviled, laughed at or pitied. The way we do this is by using words. They are our tools - our equivalent of an artist's paints or pastels. Moreover we are lucky enough to be writing in perhaps the richest and most flexible language on this planet with close to a million words at our disposal. I believe we should cherish this richness. We should be alive to the nuance and colour and association which every word brings with it.

I know that the reading age of the general public is something like seven and three-quarters and plummeting. I know there is a school of thought which says we shouldn't make things difficult for our readers because if they don't understand us they will refuse to read further. Yet I cannot believe that the way to combat stupidity is to surrender to it. We should be striving to use the best word we can in any given situation - and if that means the risk of upsetting the ignorant, so be it. We should not be seeking to decrease our vocabulary since that way lies a colourless life of 'the cat sat on the mat' illiteracy. The brain is like a muscle - it needs to be stretched, to be exercised, if it is to be fit.

But as well as preaching to the (I hope) converted, I'd like to start a kind of linguistic swap-shop where we can share words which we think should have a wider audience. Words which are strange, beautiful or intriguing. And because not all of the words will be familiar to all of us, they should come with a brief definition and an example of usage.

To begin, three adjectives which I like to use when I can:

EGREGIOUS Extremely bad or outrageous eg 'She spent some time correcting the egregious errors in his writing.'

ESOTERIC Obscure, likely to be understood only by specialists eg 'His life's work had been the study of the esoteric symbols painted on the sarcophagi.'

INEFFABLE Not able to be described in words eg 'The ineffable majesty of the Divine.'

Celebrate the effable - give us your words.

J

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I like egregious, too. Although, like some of the words below it's more likely to come up in conversation than in my fiction writing. When my blood is up, I often wax a bit bombastic (of speech or writing) over-blown, inflated, pompous.


numinous spiritual or supernatural; beyond human comprehension;

prodigious extraordinary as in size or amount; wonderful or marvelous

feckless ineffective, incompetent, feeble

 

[Ursa major]

Inchoate - just begun, undeveloped; also chaotic, disordered, confused, incoherent, rambling.

prepossessing - attracting favour, esteem or love; and its companion

unprepossessing - ordinary, dull;

sonorous - resonant, loud-sounding; also pretentious, imposing, grandiloquent.






(Oh, and feckless couldn't be anything other than effable. Or perhaps not. )

 

[Interference]

Love the idea, J, especially since it has already introduced me to two new words and one incorrectly comprehended one. Sorry I don't have contributions right now, but I hope to be back if no one interposes and purloins the mots I revel in most. I'm off to read me Wodehouse now for inspiration.

(I like revel, it reminds me of chocolates )

 

[HareBrain]

I know that the reading age of the general public is something like seven and three-quarters and plummeting.

Figures like this are often quoted, but luckily I think they refer to the public at large, not the book-reading public. The reading age for those who actually bother to read must be somewhat higher.

I wish Stephen Donaldson were a member here so we could be treated to lambent, gibbous, roynish, threnody, mien, etc ...

Perhaps the most interesting word I can think of is oodle. It is the only word I know of which in the singular means very small, but in the plural means a great many.

As in: "He hasn't an oodle of common sense"*

And: "I'll hold them off - I've got oodles of bullets!"


* admittedly this is the only context in which I've ever known it used in the singular - anyone got any others?

 

[Boneman]

I'm often incoherent when reading about politicians, but I'm a gregarious chap, who tries not to let those thing that I cannot influence, affect me. It is affectatious, is it not? But I enjoy eulogizing about the Name of The Wind, as I'm sure you all remember

And talking of oodles, I always used to ask my Sons 'have you got the whole kit and caboodle?' and I have no idea where I got that from - probably a film.

ps: can someone please tell me how to pronounce 'quixotic', so I can use it in conversation? It derives from Don key-ho-tay, so is that word 'key-hot-ick' or 'quicks-ot-ick'?

 

[mygoditsraining]

Exegesis - critical appraisal of a text or a portion of that text (particularly the Bible)

I used this in a science essay once, and got marked down for using "non-existent words". I would have liked to have been able to say I used the word out of a sheer love of language, but really I was an awkward, socially inept teenager who compensated for his frustrations by baiting his teachers (e.g. handing in a review of personal reading on the subject of Feersum Endjinn, written in the style of Bascule the Teller, to a trainee teacher who had dyslexia - I got pulled out of a class to "explain myself" over that one to the Head of English, who was trying desperately not to laugh in front of her colleagues).

Going back to the word, I love the rhythm of just saying it. Stressing the second vowel is just so very pleasant. Exegesis.

 

[mygoditsraining]

ps: can someone please tell me how to pronounce 'quixotic', so I can use it in conversation? It derives from Don key-ho-tay, so is that word 'key-hot-ick' or 'quicks-ot-ick'?

'quicks-ot-ick' is the generally-accepted form, my dictionary leads me to understand (I'm not even going to try and type out the phonetics, I'd end up doing something awful with ascii codes). I'd use it this way myself, as the other when said aloud has the rising-falling feel of someone trying too hard ...like something you'd overhear in a student bar from a guffaw of scarf-bedecked Jocastas.

Also I like making my own collective nouns.

 

[Boneman]

Thanks, MGIR, I'll try and work it into conversation today.

Also I like making my own collective nouns.

So is there a collective term for a collection of collective nouns? Have you made one up?

I like exegesis, too, but said 'exodus' once by mistake, and never got over the humiliation. Obfuscation can be very rewarding if said scathingly.

 

[mygoditsraining]

So is there a collective term for a collection of collective nouns? Have you made one up?

While my other, better half was looking for the collective noun for owls (parliament), I referred to the list as a wikipedia of collective nouns.

In my current WIP I have a sleeve of men-at-arms.

 

[mygoditsraining]

Oh, how about a logophile of collective nouns?

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

People seem to be leaving out the definitions suggested in the first post. I, however, being an individual of the most exemplary rectitude -- which is to say, rightness of principle, moral virtue, correctness -- will stick to the plan.

malediction a curse or imprecation

eldritch eerie, uncanny

tumultuous full of violent disorder, commotion, or uproar; greatly agitated in the mind or emotions; turbulent

vehement intense, ardent, impassioned

 

[BrianRigglesby]

Well hello!

Clambered: to climb, using both feet and hands; climb with effort or difficulty.

The first giant clambered awkwardly out of the side door, one gargantuous extemity at a time.

Sordid: morally ignoble or base; vile.

"Are you out of your wits, that sordid cesspool," he spits, "it's full with Boggits."

Ta Ta,

B. Rigglesby

 

[BrianRigglesby]

Sorry I don't have contributions right now, but I hope to be back if no one interposes and purloins the mots I revel in most.

If purloining the mots had anything to do with stealing the applesauce; I saw nothing.

 

[Hilarious Joke]

Ha ha ha.

That was facetious! (sarcastic, witty, jocose - a word I love)

Perhaps I should have been Facetious Joke. Doesn't really have the same ring to it though.

 

[Peter Graham]

A pox on these Greek and Latin compound words!

Allow me to plagiarise a piece of doggerel which, in the original, was enunciated through the medium of gleecraft:-

"Gawain's World!
Gawain's World!
It's feasting time!
Worshipful!"

"Whoa - check out Gwenhwyfar. If babes were semi-mythological battles drawn from the vernacular oral tradition and from the written canon of scribes and ecclesiasts like Nennius and his ilk (a shame that there is such a paucity of such material), she'd be Babe-on Hill."

Peter

 

[Interference]

Lumbersome - I think I invented this word, but I just love it. I used it to descibe a dinosaur as it lumbered in a cumbersome manner across the plain.

Puckish - which is something to do with being a lot like an elf or something. Mischievous and stuff (am I being too analytical?)

Mischievous - mis-chi-vuss, and not mis-cheev-eous, which is how most people pronounce it. It means ... ermmm, puckish

 

[Boneman]

by Teresa
People seem to be leaving out the definitions suggested in the first post.

aah...oops... Scanning too quickly, again. I thought mine were quite wet, really, but to correct that:

Incoherent: becoming unconnected (hence 'incoherent with rage'), incongrous, want of coherence, solididity in approach

Gregarious: outgoing, sociable, extrovert type person who is expressive but not oppressive in their opinions

Affectatious: a certain level of showing-off,and exaggeration

Eulogizing: praising effusively

Quixotic: a romantic, idealistic, but impractical type - That's me!!

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I like to use mischief (and mischievous) in the older sense of the word: that which causes harm or injury. As in "malicious mischief" or Shakespeare's "Or, if thou follow me, do not believe but I shall do thee mischief in the wood."

 

[Ursa major]

Or in the phrase: "Careful, or you'll do yourself a mischief."