knitandpurl has looked up 2293 words, created 11 lists, listed 1692 words, written 916 comments, added 1 tag, and loved 2 words.
Comments by knitandpurl
Comments for knitandpurl
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yarb, thanks - you're right that a Witch Grass list would be fun - maybe if I re-read it ... :)
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I'm very much enjoying your Witch Grass gleanings. They deserve their own list.
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Hey k&p! Good to see you around again :-)
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Thank you for listing the word "yowdendrift". I didn't know of it. It's beautiful.
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Hi enjoyed your list!
Could you add a word to my list??
I just began to use this site and I am learning how to use it.
Thanks! -
Hi K&P,
I have been enjoying your list, and particulaly like your username. Good to see you around!
knitandpurl commented on the word humpy
"Some of these worked as stockmen or labourers or kitchen-hands and lived in quarters not far from the homestead; others seemed to have no other homes than a row of humpies beside the creek."
Barley Patch by Gerald Murnane, p 49 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback edition
May 21, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word gasconade
"Invariably I have some refreshment placed upon the fortepiano of the bushy-haired, gasconading lout of a band leader."
Berlin Stories by Robert Walser, translated by Susan Bernofsky, pp 54-55 of the NYRB paperback
May 9, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word reptant
"The tone of this voice—I've studied it in considerable depth—reproduces in sound the approximate impression made on the eye of the progress of a snail, so resplendently languorous, so lazy, so brown, so very reptant, so slimy, so gluey, and so terribly if-not-today-why-not-tomorrow."
Berlin Stories by Robert Walser, translated by Susan Bernofsky, pp 48-49 of the NYRB paperback
May 8, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word calash
Well, I knew what this word meant in 2008 but had since forgotten. Rediscovered it today, thus:
"Certainly one finds the most and greatest elegance on Tauentzienstrasse; the Kurfürstendamm is delightful with its trees and calashes."
Berlin Stories by Robert Walser, translated by Susan Bernofsky, p 19 of the NYRB paperback
May 8, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word inspissated
"She swam in mangrove swamps, amongst the maze of roots in the mud, snapping up fiddler-crabs and mudskippers, spitting shell into the inspissated mess of mud, leaf skeletons, seaweed."
Ragnarök by A.S. Byatt, p 66
May 6, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word kenning
"Her nose was fine and her brows were dusky, like smoke, like the lower world's kenning for 'forest', seaweed of the hills."
Ragnarök by A.S. Byatt, p 46
May 3, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word fulgurating
"Dead from the cancer, and sometimes you still felt a fulgurating sadness over it, even though he really was a super asshole at the end."
- from "Miss Lora" by Junot Díaz, p 63 of the April 23, 2012 edition of the New Yorker
Apr 24, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word anemophily
"Two bees report on traffic, warning listeners
to the anemophily channel
as the natural disaster
of humanity comes closer
every morning. Work while you can, they say."
- from "Flooded Meadow" by Stephen Burt, p 52 of the April 23, 2012 edition of the New Yorker
Apr 24, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word slane
"They miss, too, the wooden turf carts that lie weathered and rain-pocked at the side of the road. They miss the angle of the slanes, leaning up against the carts."
- "Transatlantic" by Colum McCann, p 103of the April 16, 2012 issue of the New Yorker
Apr 17, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word dragoman
"For all his sentimentality about gentlemanly chivalry, Lord doesn't shy away from what the sinking and its aftermath revealed about the era's privileges and prejudices. "Even the passengers' dogs were glamorous," begins a tongue-in-cheek catalogue in "A Night to Remember" that includes a Pekingese named Sun Yatsen—part of the entourage of Henry Harper, of the publishing family, who, Lord laconically reports, had also picked up an Egyptian dragoman during his preëmbarkation travels, "as a sort of joke.""
- "Unsinkable" by Daniel Mendelsohn, p 68 of the April 16, 2012 issue of the New Yorker
Apr 17, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word irisation
"It is evidently a problem of method, he went on as if overwhelmed, one believes one is looking through a wider and wider lens, but one sees only the lens, the irisations, the dust motes on its surface, when I was an art critic I was always knocking my head against this decisive problem, how to speak about Flemish painting, how to speak about the blue of the virgin's cloak without forever erasing the color behind the word that qualifies it?"
Invitation to a Voyage by François Emmanuel, translated by Justin Vicari, pp 41-42 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
Apr 11, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word tamis
"the postcard pictures weren't innocent, four women laughing, straining wheat through their wicker tamis in a blond light,"
Invitation to a Voyage by François Emmanuel, translated by Justin Vicari, p 13 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
Apr 11, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word staffage
(I looked this up because it's the title of a John Ashbery poem, in his book A Wave.)
Apr 7, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word chlamys
"The figure of Mercury had become both more theatrical and more human: no longer a statue, he was draped in a freshly laundered chlamys that set off his well-formed but slight physique; the broad-brimmed petasus sat charmingly on his curls."
- "Description of a Masque" by John Ashbery, p 29 of the Noonday Press paperback edition of A Wave
Apr 7, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word cimmerian
Blurb on the back of A Wave by John Ashbery says:
"The charm of Ashbery's urbane style—so various, so beautiful, so new—persists throughout A Wave, and will induce the rereadings the poem demands. It is a style that resists, in its glowing reflectiveness, the approaching darkness of the cimmerian moment."
—Helen Vendler, The New York Review of Books
Apr 6, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word epicene
"In a dystopian society in the future, a group of wealthy, epicene overlords—authoritarians with violet hair and the vicious manners of French courtiers—threaten and control an impoverished population."
"Kids at Risk" by David Denby, in The New Yorker, p 68 of the April 2, 2012 issue.
Apr 4, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word copperas
"To prepare the fastest blue, for example, you would need an English vat containing 'five times one hundred and twelve pounds of the best woad, five pounds of umbro madder, one peck of cornell and bran, the refuse of wheat, four pounds of copperas, and a quarter of a peck of dry slacked lime.'"
Mauve by Simon Garfield (quoting William Partridge), p 42 of the Norton paperback edition
Mar 29, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word carthamus
"There were several other important plant dyes — carthamus, woad, saffron, brazilwood and turmeric — but even these represented an extremely narrow range of colours, confined variously to red, blue, yellow, brown and black."
Mauve by Simon Garfield, p 41 of the Norton paperback edition
Mar 29, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word coumarin
"Meanwhile, Dr Schweitzer was reaching a conclusion, and briefly mentioned that Perkin was, predictably by this stage, very much responsible for the way women smelt, having once formed coumarin from coal-tar, which led to artificial musk, and then to the artificial production of the scents of violets, roses, jasmine and the 'smell of the year' — oil of wintergreen."
Mauve by Simon Garfield, p 10 of the Norton paperback edition
Mar 28, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word locknit
"Dora decided to do some washing before supper and within half an hour the kitchen was festooned with lines of depressing-looking underwear — fawn locknit knickers and petticoats of the same material. It was even drearier than mine."
Excellent Women by Barbara Pym, p 106 of the Plume paperback edition
Mar 13, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word lincrusta
"The room was very high with a lincrusta ceiling and an elaborate mantelpiece of brawn-like marble."
Excellent Women by Barbara Pym, p 91 of the Plume paperback edition
Mar 12, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word sandboy
"Winifred smiled affectionately after him as he left the room. 'Men are just children, really, aren't they. He's as happy as a sandboy when he's doing something messy.'"
Excellent Women by Barbara Pym, p 47 of the Plume paperback edition
Mar 11, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word biretta
"Julian was hanging up his biretta on a peg in the narrow hall."
Excellent Women by Barbara Pym, p 13 of the Plume paperback edition
Mar 11, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word deodand
"The judges of the assize listened to and gave their verdict on cases of theft, of coin-clipping, street brawls, a smothered baby, bigamy, land disputes, ale that was too weak, loaves that were short, disputed wills, deodands, vagabondage, begging, shipmasters' quarrels, fisticuffs among neighbors, arson, runaway heiresses, and naughty apprentices."
Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin, p 382 of the Berkley paperback edition
Feb 27, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word purlin
"She and Ulf were alone on a bed in a room, and she was looking up at the timber beams and purlins of a ceiling she'd seen before."
Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin, p 342 of the Berkley paperback edition
Feb 27, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word aumbry
"An aumbry in the refectory contained labeled jars that spoke well of Sister Odilia's knowledge of herbology, though it also held a plentiful supply of opium—too plentiful, in the opinion of Adelia, who, knowing the drug's power, kept her own cache to a minimum in case of theft."
Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin, p 302 of the Berkley paperback edition
Feb 27, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word dorter
"For Cambridge generally, the bells acted as a daytime clock; appointments were made by them, sandglasses turned, business begun and closed; they rang laborers to their fields at Lauds, sent them home at vespers. But their clanging by night allowed sleeping laity the schadenfreude of staying in bed while nuns and monks were having to issue from their cells and dorters to sing vigils."
Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin, p 276 of the Berkley paperback edition
Feb 27, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word kard
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/36.25.1043 says "A kard is defined as a straight, single-edged dagger that is worn on the left side of the belt. Unlike most daggers, in which the narrow tang attached to the blade fits into a handle, the blades of these daggers are made with a flat steel tang of the same width as the blade."
Feb 26, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word kard
"The matter of his kard was also resolved with charm. "The dagger is not a weapon," Sir Joscelin told his porter, who was struggling to wrest it from Mansur's belt and put it with the swords. "It is a decoration for such a gentleman as this, as we old crusaders know.""
Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin, p 191 of the Berkley paperback edition
Feb 26, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word eyre
"He stared with manic vacancy at the soldier who announced his visitors. "Can't they see I'm busy? Don't they know the justices in eyre are coming?""
Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin, p 144 of the Berkley paperback edition
Feb 26, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word motte
"The simple motte and bailey the Conqueror had built to guard the river crossing had gone, its wooden palisade replaced by curtain walls, its keep grown into the accommodation, church, stables, mews, barracks, women's quarters, kitchens, laundry, vegetable and herb gardens, dairy, tiltyards, and gallows and lockup necessary for a sheriff administering a sizable, prosperous town."
Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin, p 141 of the Berkley paperback edition
Feb 26, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word pourboire
"As errand boy to his grandmother's eel business, he occasionally received pourboires from the customers, a source of money now cut off."
Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin, p 119 of the Berkley paperback edition
Feb 26, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word agal
"A gilded agal held the veil of his kaffiyeh in place; silk flowed long and light around a fresh white woolen robe."
Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin, p 190 of the Berkley paperback edition
Feb 26, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word balk
I didn't know the "unplowed strip of land" definition of this until now:
"Beyond an orchard, a raised balk ran along the edge of a common field leading down to the river, angled with cultivated strips."
Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin, p 118 of the Berkley paperback edition
Feb 25, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word agrimony
I apparently didn't write down what made me first look this up, but I am now looking it up again because of the below:
"She could do nothing about the woman's blindness but sent her on her way with an eyewash of weak, strained agrimony that, with regular use, should get rid of the inflammation."
Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin, p 112 of the Berkley paperback edition
Feb 25, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word amercement
""Indeed not, my lord." Sir Rowley seemed affronted by the idea. "Or not more than usual. But if the lady is to conduct an unofficial inquest, it might subject both town and priory to punitive taxes—I don't say it will, but the regular amercements, confiscations of goods, et cetera might apply.""
Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin, p 69 of the Berkley paperback edition
Feb 24, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word caparisoned
"He had not, therefore, returned home the same way but had taken the quicker route to Jewry by going over the bridge and passing through the town so that he could see the carriages and caparisoned horses of the visiting Jews in Chaim's stable."
Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin, p 37 of the Berkley paperback edition
Feb 23, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word rochet
"Now then, here's a prior. We know him, too, from the violet rochet he wears, as do all canons of Saint Augustine."
Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin, p 2 of the Berkley paperback edition
Feb 23, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word spaldeen
"The paintings—closeups of manhole covers with their cryptic labyrinthine pattern of raised welts, loving roseate sunsets that turned out to be the sheen and scuff on a spaldeen—had multiplied; there were so many of them now that the artist had been obliged to carve a trail, as it were, among them, that would permit access to the kitchen table, where David and I now sat down."
"Citizen Conn" by Michael Chabon, p 95 of the New Yorker, February 13 & 20, 2012
Feb 21, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word spaldeen
Wikipedia says a spaldeen is a Spalding Hi-Bounce ball: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaldeen
Feb 21, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word estivate
"Galápagos giant tortoises crop the lawn. Burmese stars, Egyptians, Chacos form Argentina, all snooze, munch, estivate under leaf cover, bask, and breed, sometimes noisily, with males groaning and shells clattering."
"Slow and Steady" by William Finnegan, p 59 of the January 23, 2012 issue of the New Yorker
Feb 14, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word pargeting
"At Corbets Tey, we admire the pargeting and think of Marc Atkins. It might be a moulded shield or an entire wall. The iconography of Essex pargeting is a topic we're too wet to debate. Oak trees, stags, horsemen: the confederacy of the forest."
London Orbital by Iain Sinclair, p 514 of the Penguin paperback edition
Feb 13, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word redshank
"We stand at the river's edge, the point where the Darent is absorbed. Or what we take to be the edge: pipings of redshank, a slurping earth-soup."
London Orbital by Iain Sinclair, p 452 of the Penguin paperback edition
Feb 12, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word parousial
See parousia.
"Conspiracy theories and 'parousial notions' interbreed; the cults of Kosmon and Scientology are linked nin Gascoyne's mind."
London Orbital by Iain Sinclair, p 433 of the Penguin paperback edition
Feb 10, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word bunce
"Lacking all scruples (and proud of it), he is incorruptible. He will pocket the bunce, but it won't sugar his report."
London Orbital by Iain Sinclair, p 429 of the Penguin paperback edition
Feb 10, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word santolina
"The rain brings out the scent from beds of santolina, dripping lavender."
London Orbital by Iain Sinclair, p 398 of the Penguin paperback edition
Feb 9, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word grockle
"Major General James Wolfe repels all incomers (aliens, grockles)."
London Orbital by Iain Sinclair, p 393 of the Penguin paperback edition
Feb 9, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word orfe
"After a good lunch, a morning – in bed – dictating memos, he liked to sit by the pond 'in a simple garden chair' feeding 'fat golden orfe'."
London Orbital by Iain Sinclair, p 392 of the Penguin paperback edition
Feb 9, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word ullage
"Now the sporting spirit has definitively run out, replaced by dedicated afternoon boozing, history like a puddle of ullage."
London Orbital by Iain Sinclair, p 391 of the Penguin paperback edition
Feb 9, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word gilet
"There's a pair of them; one in a down-stuffed gilet, the other in flowerpot hat and blood-red spectacles."
London Orbital by Iain Sinclair, p 250 of the Penguin paperback edition
Feb 4, 2012