"Set in an elementary school in Argentina in the early seventies, it is in fact a pasquinade on the bourgeois pretentions and puerile rivalries among Buenos Aires writers and intellectuals at that time."
Darren Koolman, in his Translator's Preface to The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, p V of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Video games have turned everyone under the age of 20 into experts on military history and tactics; 12-year-olds on school buses argue about the right way to deploy onagers and cataphracts while outflanking a Roman triplex acies formation."
"It's All Geek to Me" by Neal Stephenson, pp 60-61 of Some Remarks
"Of course the Carbonite stilettos pierced it as if it were cork board, but this spoiled his aim long enough for me to whip my wakizashi out from between my shoulder blades and swing at his head."
"Slashdot Interview" by Neal Stephenson, p 28 of Some Remarks
"She sent me out to check ten sycamores at the backs of some houses in Romsey to see whether there was a root problem when it came to the sewers (the sycamores were fine, though a leylandii clump was too close to the houses by far) and by the time I got back to work she'd sent me an email saying I'd been assigned next week off, on half-pay—in October, which is one of our busiest times."
"You laugh out loud and tell me what Angela Carter said about that 'fubsy beast': she thought he looked more like a pajama case than a tiger. I go away and look up the word fubsy. I've never heard it before."
"He hangs his distinctive coat on a peg and says, "I have found a wonderful subject for you: Stesichorus's palinode ..." Yes, I can still see Mr. Bailly very clearly."
Climates by André Maurois, translated by Adriana Hunter, p 11 of the Other Press paperback edition
"Set free from carking care and amply provided for, we were able to give most of our time and energy to our real profession – which, of course, is Sapping – and so moving northward and then westward we presently arrived, after a leisurely but eventful journey, much of it very comfortably underground, at the eastern border of Bombardy."
The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, p 335 of the New York Review of Books edition
"Set free from carking care and amply provided for, we were able to give most of our time and energy to our real profession – which, of course, is Sapping – and so moving northward and then westward we presently arrived, after a leisurely but eventful journey, much of it very comfortably underground, at the eastern border of Bombardy."
The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, p 335 of the New York Review of Books edition
"The Judge, as it happened, was playing clock-golf with his Cook, and his two maids were watching, so there was some delay before the visitors were admitted."
The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, p 205 of the New York Review of Books hardcover
"Are you quite sure, Mrs. Wellaby, that you haven't committed even the least little tiny tort in the last few days? Because I am ready, now as ever, to defend you against any accusation whatsoever, no matter whether it be barratry or illicit diamond-buying, forgery or coining, breach of promise to marry, or armed resistance to capture."
The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, p 199 of the New York Review of Books hardcover
"For tea they had scones and pancakes, crumpets and pikelets, muffins and cream buns, plum cake and seed cake and cream cake and chocolate cake, and often some bread and butter as well."
The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, p 23 of the New York Review of Books hardcover
"It was a pleasant room with a window facing south, a satinwood bed, a satinwood dressing-table, and a satinwood writing desk at which Miss Serendip used to sit and write letters to her seven sisters"
The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, p 19 of the New York Review of Books hardcover
"These rackets are strange: they look like "old rackets" (like violas to violins, crumhorns to bassoons); one of them has an extremely large wooden frame and the racket itself (the stringed part) is a tiny round (not oval) hole that is obviously stringless."
La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams by Georges Perec, translated by Daniel Levin Becker
"On the second floor of the Opera atelier, Anna Maria sat at a dressing table with a small mirror, took a round etui from her pocket, extracted the reddened cotton wad, spit on it, and blotted her lips."
"Miss Hagman had the perfect life: a luxurious apartment, more than adequate means, and she was free to be a coryphée, to socialize with all manner of people—from royalty to artists."
In Greek mythology, a staff of giant fennel (Ferula communis) covered with ivy vines and leaves, sometimes wound with taeniae and always topped with a pine cone."
"Then ask him if he wouldn't happen to have some glasswort, and if not than percebes, or goose barnacles, those little crustaceans like the ones you find in Galicia and the Madrilenian markets."
My Beautiful Bus by Jacques Jouet, translated by Eric Lamb, p 45
"The remnants of a lacy filibeg clung to the twisted circlets of the Crimson crown, its garnets glinting dully, and the Punctilious Trousers bore unpleasant stains."
"The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 239 of Errantry: Strange Stories
"She gestured at the waiting cabriolets and winged caravans, parked alongside the bridled destriers and sleeping gorgosaurs that lined the long curving drive."
"The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 236 of Errantry: Strange Stories
""The Crimson Court has a legendary kitchen. Too long have you languished here among your toadstools and toxic chanterells, Saloona Morn! At great danger to myself, I have secured you an invitation so that you may sample the Paeolinas' nettlefish froth and their fine baked viands, also a cellar known throughout the Metarin Mountains for vintages as rare as they are temulent. Still you remain skeptical of my motivations.""
"The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 225 of Errantry: Strange Stories
""An ustulating spell directed at his paramour's bathing chamber. The squireen has been reduced to ash. The optimate's need to retain his affection has therefore diminished.""
"The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 223 of Errantry: Strange Stories
""The Queen was not aware of it either," replied Paytim. "Her brother poisoned her and seized control of the Crimson Messuage. He has impertinently invited me to attend his coronoation as Paeolina the Twenty-Ninth.""
"The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 221 of Errantry: Strange Stories
"When the dishes were cleared and the last of the locust jelly spooned from a shared bowl, Paytim poured two jiggers of amber whiskey. She removed a pair of red-hot pokers from the kitchen athanor, plunged one into each jigger, then dropped the spent pokers into the sink."
"The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 216 of Errantry: Strange Stories
"Insensibility, melancholia, hebetude; ordinary mental tumult and more elaborate physical vexations (boils, a variety of thrip that caused the skin of an unfaithful lover to erupt in a spectacular rash, the color of violet mallows)—Saloona Morn cultivated these in her parterre in the shadow of Cobalt Mountain."
"Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 209 of Errantry: Strange Stories
"His former colleagues were now living eidolons of youth, beauty, health, joy, desire flitting past him in the studio, lovely and remote as figures from a medieval allegory."
- "The Far Shore" by Elizabeth Hand, p 130 of Errantry: Strange Stories
"Today, I blame myself for my irenicism: I should never have allowed the issue of Les Temps modernes on the Arab–Israeli conflict to open with Rodinson's article, 'Israel, a Colonial Reality?', for I do not believe that this is, or has ever been, the case: in my films and in my writings, I have striven tirelessly to reveal the complex reality of Israel."
The Patagonian Hare by Claude Lanzmann, translated by Frank Wynne, p 399-400 of the Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover edition
"To get from Beijing to Pyongyang, one went either by rail or by air: the first entailed a forty-eight-hour journey with a stop of indeterminate length at the Sino-Korean border before travelling north at a snail's pace through the septentrional regions of North Korea since there had recently been a catastrophic explosion that had destroyed a railway station and two trains, resulting in countless victims."
The Patagonian Hare by Claude Lanzmann, translated by Frank Wynne, p 315 of the Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover edition
"It was over Duelo a garrotazos that I had apagogically envisaged rolling the opening credits for my film Tsahal, about the Israeli army and the wars it was compelled to fight."
The Patagonian Hare by Claude Lanzmann, translated by Frank Wynne, p 31 of the Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover edition
"Thus all they had to select from was tea, bread and sweet butter, porridge, ham and broiled mushrooms, rabbit pie, fricandeau of eggs, mayonnaise of prawns, and spiced beef."
"Lord Woadmire is not related to the original line of Qwghlm, the Moore family (Anglicized from the Qwghlmian clan name Mnyhrrgh) which had been terminated in 1888 by a spectacularly improbable combination of schistosomiasis, suicide, long-festering Crimean war wounds, ball lightning, flawed cannon, falls from horses, improperly canned oysters, and rogue waves."
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 255 of the Avon Books paperback edition
"Propped up against the stonework next to the building's entrance is a gaffer dressed in an antique variant of the Home Guard uniform, involving knickerbockers."
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 253 of the Avon Books paperback edition
"As a result, the authorities of his country, the United States of America, have made him swear a mickle oath of secrecy, and keep supplying him with new uniforms of various services and ranks, and now have sent him to London."
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 146 of the Avon Books paperback edition
"Soon they are standing before the fort's entrance, which is flanked by carvings of a pair of guards cut into the foamy volcanic tuff: halberd-brandishing Spaniards in blousy pants and conquistador helmets."
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 121 of the Avon Books paperback edition
"The United States part is, however, a safe bet, because every time he arrives at a curb, he either comes close to being run over by shooting-brake or he falters in his stride; diverts his train of thought onto a siding, much to the disturbance of its passengers and crew; and throws some large part of his mental calculation circuitry into the job of trying to reflect his surroundings through a large mirror. They drive on the left side of the street here."
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, pp 143-144 of the Avon Books paperback edition
"The speed and power of their growth is alarming, the forms they adopt as bizarre and varied as those of deep-sea organisms, and all of them, he supposes, are as dangerous to an airplane as punji stakes to a barefoot pedestrian."
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 30 of the Avon Books paperback edition
""Yes! Russell and Whitehead. It's like this: when mathematicians began fooling around with things like the square root of negative one, and quaternions, then they were no longer dealing with things that you could translate into sticks and bottlecaps. And yet they were still getting sound results."
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 18 of the Avon Books paperback edition
"For each stop—each timbre, or type of sound, that the organ could make (viz. blockflöte, trumpet, piccolo)—there was a separate row of pipes, arranged in a line from long to short."
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 8 of the Avon Books paperback edition
"With only a few days to listen to the recordings, make notes, digest files from Time correspondents, read morgue clippings, and skim through several books, I was soon sprawled on the floor at home, surrounded by drifts of undifferentiated paper, and near tears in a catatonic swivet."
- "Structure" by John McPhee, p 46 of the January 14, 2013 issue of the New Yorker
"It was all very confusing, and she continued to enjoy Easter eggs and decorating the Christmas tree, and found the books that Parminder pressed upon her children, explaining the lives of the gurus and the tenets of Khalsa, extremely difficult to read."
""And what about you?" Simon roared at his wife, who was still frozen beside the computer, her eyes wide behind her glasses, her hand clamped like a yashmak over her mouth."
"Lawrence Lessig, the whilom Special Master in the Justice Department's antitrust suit against Microsoft, complained that he had installed Internet Explorer on his computer, and in so doing, lost all of his bookmarks--his personal list of signposts that he used to navigate through the maze of the Internet."
- "In the Beginning was the Command Line" by Neal Stephenson
"As if the spectres with which he paid for his passage to England, the soucouyants with which he revenged his uncle and family, all those bloodthirsty ghosts of his narrative have come alive in this city."
"By now Amir has become used to the overbearing smells of London houses, especially around the kitchen: the odours, he feels, are stronger and more basic — burnt meat, boiled vegetables — than in respectable houses in his village, which are open to the cleansing air, purified by agarbattis."
"Little good it did him though, this facing of a new future, the diligence with which he, in his youth, worked as a munshi before the death of his father called him back to the land, and the way in which he set himself to learn the customs and language of the Firangs."
"I had always admired Hamid Bhai's ability to guess where the cut kite would alight, just as I admired his capacity to hold his breath for so long during our games of kabbadi."
"Sign language has its own syntax patterns, dialects and accents (American Southerners are known for "blurry" signing), and even usage experts, who teach native signers to use the language with concinnity."
"Little Strangers" by Nathan Heller, p 89 of the November 19, 2012 issue of the New Yorker
"From his command post in the doorway of the Great Hall, Mister Pouncey pondered lists of secretaries and seal-keepers, council clerks and sergeants-at-arms. Was the Clerk of Petty Bag senior to a gentleman groom? he wondered. How important was the Keeper of the Hanaper, or the Chafe Wax?"
"Beyond it lay overgrown beds and plants John had never set eyes on before: tall resinous fronds, prickly shrubs, long grey-green leaves hot to the tongue. Nestling among them he found the root whose scent drifted among the trees like a ghost, sweet and tarry. He knelt and pressed it to his nose.
' That was called silphium.' His mother stood behind him. 'It grew in Saturnus's first garden.'"
"John and his mother swished through carpets of vetches and fescues or pushed their way through the bushes, splashing through springs that broke through the turf and flowed through the grass in secret cascades."
"Unsurprisingly, the audiences got longer and more ragged, with a growing number of her loving subjects going away regretting that they had not performed well and feeling, too, that the monarch had somehow bowled them a googly."
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, p 41 of the FSG hardcover edition
"He took the books up to the Queen's floor and, having been told to make himself as scarce as possible, when the duke came by hid behind a boulle cabinet."
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, p 16 of the FSG hardcover edition
The "a person of a keen, irritable temper" definition of this one is new to me. As in (re: Cecil Beaton):
"'No, of course not. You'd be too young. He always used to be round here, snapping away. And a bit of a tartar. Stand here, stand there. Snap, snap. And there's a book about him now?"
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, p 7 of the FSG hardcover edition
"My work required careful research (as patient as Gutenberg taking his time making an ink that was neither too fluid nor not fluid enough) to find a discrete way to starch the lips of these slits. I used kaolin."
Savage by Jacques Jouet, translated by Amber Shields, p 58 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback edition
"She who knew neither past nor future, who had neither a tomorrow nor memories, had been obliged without warning to come here, to follow this grand deviation of the arrow of time—the most beautiful fleuron of occidental decadence."
- Savage by Jacques Jouet, translated by Amber Shields, p 36 of the Dalkey Archive paperback edition
""Exactly," says Paloma triumphantly, "there is not enough regulation. Too many rail workers, not enough plumbers. Personally, I would prefer the kolkhoz.""
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, translated by Alison Anderson, p 281 of the Europa Editions paperback
"Thus we use up a considerable amount of our energy in intimidation and seduction, and these two strategies alone ensure the quest for territory, hierarchy and sex that gives life to our conatus."
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, translated by Alison Anderson, p 97 of the Europa Editions paperback
"Had I but the leisure to bite into the standard meter, I would slap myself noisily on the thighs while reading, and such delightful chapters as "Uncovering the final sense of science by becoming immersed in science qua noematic phenomenon" or "The problems constituting the transcendental ego" might even cause me to die of laughter, a blow straight to the heart as I sit slumped in my plush armchair, with plum juice or thin driblets of chocolate oozing from the corners of my mouth..."
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, translated by Alison Anderson, p 58 of the Europa Editions paperback
"As the noise of the helicopter's engine faded out on the roof above them, Riggs and Macready bent down and inspected the crude catamaran hidden behind a screen of bocage under the balcony."
The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard, p 73 of the 50th anniversary edition
"She noticed Riggs peering over his shoulder at the bar. 'What's the matter, Colonel? Looking for your punka-wallah? I'm not going to get you a drink, if that's what you're after. I think you men only come up here to booze.'"
The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard, p 39 of the 50th anniversary edition
"A specially commissioned report, commending 'the alluvial nature of the soil', listed the valley's crops 'of all kinds from the rarest to the coarsest qualities. Tobacco, the fig, the vine, the olive, the poppy, the cotton plant and mulberry tree are all indigenous products, whilst maize, barley, beans, flax, hemp and a variety of pulse and oleaginous seeds are raised in large quantities. Valonia, yellow-berries, wool, goats' hair, dyestuffs, drugs, skins, honey, wax and likewise abound.' The only hindrance was the primitive condition of the region's Ottoman infrastructure; by revolutionising the pre-industrial carriage of the valley's largely perishable produce, the railway company's backers meant to make a killing."
Meander: East to West, Indirectly, Along a Turkish River by Jeremy Seal, p 270 of the Bloomsbury USA hardcover edition
"I was curious about the watermills. The locals spoke of these mills as they might have referred to old mine workings or to the quicksands of tidal flats, to ice-covered ponds or the craters of rumbling volcanoes; I sensed it might pay this visiting canoeist to understand the local view if only because watermills meant no more to me than innocuous echoes of a pre-industrial past, a stock feature of picturesque period landscapes, high wheels turning harmlessly within the barred confines of their leats."
Meander: From East to West, Indirectly, Along a Turkish River by Jeremy Seal, p 135 of the Bloomsbury USA hardcover edition
"By the time she returned with my breakfast — a tight-waisted glass of black tea, bread. crumbly white cheese, ship-lapped slices of tomato and cucumber, honey, and a boiled egg — and with more parsley for her husband, I was deep in the lead stories."
Meander: East to West, Indirectly, Along a Turkish River by Jeremy Seal, p 21 of the Bloomsbury USA hardcover edition
"'Now just go through to the dairy,' said Paul Treece's mother, 'and on the stone you'll see pork sausages. We'll fry them for the chicken on the fire. The bread sauce is at the bottom of the oven and there'll be room. The plum pudding's well away. There's room for another pan. It's a fine pow-sowdy. I'se not my usual self this year. Most-times I'se brisker. Maybe it's soon to be bothering with Christmas, but Paul wouldn't have wanted us overcome.'"
Crusoe's Daughter by Jane Gardam, p 178 of the Europa Editions paperback
"And yet, as though to punish me now for calquing my own images over these sidewalks long ago, Via Clelia was giving them all back—but not a thing more."
Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere by André Aciman, p 30 of the FSG hardcover
"The wishfilm we leave on our walks glistens on the city's hard surfaces like the luminous imprint of fish scales left on a butcher's block hours after the fish was caught, cut, and cooked—outside of time. It still glistens, still pulsates, reaching out to strangers, calling out to them, sometimes long after we're gone. The remanence of our presence, our lingering afterimage on this city—the best of us."
Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere by André Aciman, p 155 of the FSG hardcover
"Biffy was a man of principle. He refused, on principle, to sell a huge tricolored pifferaro bonnet decorated with a cascade of clove pinks, black currants, and cut jet beads to Mrs. Colindrikal-Bumbcruncher for her daughter."
"He spoke in a hushed voice. "I traced Madame Lefoux to the dahabiya docks. A peculiar sort of place. Lost the scent there. I'm afraid she may have boarded a ship. ...""
Also a style of hat in the late 1870s: per the Berg Dictionary of Fashion History it's a "hat with a short, chimney-pot crown trimmed with an aigrette in front."
"The ox was sleek, black, muscular; when it plodded into the spotlight, under the guidance of a wrangler, the stage crew and other rehearsing performers shifted tensely, as if each motion might mark the start of a faena."
- "Listen and Learn" by Nathan Heller, in The New Yorker, July 9 & 16, 2012, p 69
"Where, we wonder, are the people of Nashville? That's one thing we like about our cities, we agree: there are always people about. They're usually drunk, of course. Drunk and lairy. But that is a good sign."
"Capitalism and religion, W. says. Or, in my case, failed capitalism and failed religion. Somehow, I'm the key to his project, W. says. Somehow I'm the key to the copula, though he's not sure how."
"The white charlock, which was obviously as much of a pest in Furtwangen as its yellow brother in Low Hall, touched the morbid scene with falsely cheerful light.'
The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey, p 94 of the Knopf hardcover edition
"Did you know when applying to register a rebuilt Mini one must declare whether one's fucking chassis or monocoque body has been replaced or modified in any way?"
The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey, p 85 of the Knopf hardcover edition
"Before the glass cleaning began I would have to remove the brass collet at the end of each rod. The collet would fit into some as yet unseen mechanism which would rotate the rods."
The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey, p 78 of the Knopf hardcover
"Then, perhaps two months later, when I had stepped, as I often did, into the totalisator agency in a suburb adjoining my own suburb, I saw the monk in a far corner, reading one of the form-guides on the wall."
Barley Patch by Gerald Murnane, p 238 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"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
"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
"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."
"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
"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
"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
"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
"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."
"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.
"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
"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
"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
"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
"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
"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
"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
"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
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."
"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
"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
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
""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
"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
"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
"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
"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
"The London Loop by David Sharp continued the process of opening up the suburbs, linking patches of woodland, riverside paths, tracks across chalk and greensand."
London Orbital by Iain Sinclair, p 83 of the Penguin paperback edition
"Thick woods, screening the concrete bunkers and hunchbacked huts from the eyes of the curious, will provide an excellent habitat for shy fauna, for monkjacks."
London Orbital by Iain Sinclair, p 39 of the Penguin paperback edition
"Driving on the M25, coming over the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, fumbling for your coin to pay the road toll, nurdling into the right lane, brings out the stories."
London Orbital by Iain Sinclair, p 13 of the Penguin paperback edition
I thought I'd first seen this word just now, but it was already on my 'looked up' list so I must've seen it before. Well, here's where I most recently encountered it:
"I'd draw every known bird in the world. Avadavat, turtle dove, chaffinch, bullfinch. It would be something to do and it would take care of time and give me some pleasure."
Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch, p 287 of the Doubleday hardcover edition
I like that this word is both "a school of whales" and "a visit between whalers."
The latter:
"We met another ship, the Gallopan out of New Bedford, and so embarked upon a gam—a meeting of ships, a bit of fun—and that was my first and best gam, and went on for three or four days till I began to think that we were out here on this ocean for no other reason than to drink rum, eat Wilson Pride's salty pork dumplings and play cards of an evening."
Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch, p 91 of the Doubleday hardcover edition
"That first supper on deck, all of us from fo'c's'le sitting next to the tryworks round a huge lump of salt pork that sat like a rock upon a tub they called the kid."
Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch, p 72 of the Doubleday hardcover edition
"By the time I was eleven I could read and write. Mr. Jamrach said he needed his boys to be able to write things down and read off lists. I was quick. Ma was impressed. "You clever boy, Jaf," she said when I read the posters plastered outside the seamen's bethel."
Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch, p 40 of the Doubleday hardcover edition
"Martin himself supervised them, and also ordered the sails set in counterpoise to each other, so that the ship would be as perfectly still as possible. Then he called out, "Top gallant yards, acock bill," an order that sent men scurrying up the rigging."
"The Lucy left Plymouth Harbor under steam (somewhere below deck—Lenox suspected it was in the orlop, but couldn't feel sure—men were shoveling coal as if their lives depended on it) about an hour later."
"Rafinesque perfected his variant of this honorable philosophy while botanizing in the literal backyards of my childhood, examining ruderal plants I've known all my life, and so I have appropriated it from him, with minor tweaks."
John Jeremiah Sullivan, quoted in "Reality Effects" by James Wood, p 136 of the December 19 & 26, 2011 issue of The New Yorker
"Failing to be uplifted by white columns or the vertical thrust of the hall's backbone, he dwelled instead on how the opening of the brise-soleil, the structure above the building so reminiscent of a whale's tail just before a long submersion, left those inside both exposed—and trapped."
"In the middle of the final series—1st sefirot, fortress, sacri-fly, infold, purl, 2nd sefirot, j-ladder (5) —Clef felt the alien tug.
(5) Recent additions to sleight vocabulary have come from varied disciplines. Hands have reenvisioned structures from molecular biology, Kabbalah, psychoanalysis, physics, Vodou, baseball, astronomy, rock art, the I Ching, chemistry, and knitting."
"There was no reply to his question, however, and he went back to reading, occasionally pausing to sip the hot negus that had gone lukewarm as he worked."
I didn't know the sense of "schoolmaster" 'til now.
As in: "At his school, Harrow, one of the beaks from his house, Druries (where Lord Byron had been, not to mention Lord Palmerston, who had died only a year before), had noticed Lenox's height and asked him to come row for the house team."
"But age comes quickest and most irremediable to mechanical things. The life of a sparking-plug is a fierce tropical existence of days only. No healing leucocytes rush to the aid of a cracked cylinder, nor anastomosing tributaries expand to carry the life-blood of a choked feed-pipe."
Poet's Pub by Eric Linklater, pp 279-280 of the Orkney Edition hardcover
"Saturday poked them with his fingers, and as he did so, a line or two shone brightly in the quick fire. 'The corposants burnt blue on every mast,' he read."
Poet's Pub by Eric Linklater, p 129 of the Orkney Edition hardcover
"Joan Benbow, driving ambitiously, had watched her ball land, leap forward in a series of diminishing arcs, and come to rest in Hibbett's Hole. (Hibbett was a Victorian golfer, one of John Company's colonels, who died in harness, his enlarged spleen bursting almost simultaneously with a good niblick in the bunker now called after him.)"
Poet's Pub by Eric Linklater, p 94 of the Orkney Edition hardcover
"They might be charming fellows, of course. Great, noisy children, now laughing full-heartedly, now piteously seeking comfort and dimly knowing in their wise Slave hearts—were they Slavs?—that no one on earth could comfort them. Children of the steppes who would never grow up. But they grew beards, damn them. Great strouting bristle-patches of beards."
Poet's Pub by Eric Linklater, p 55 of the Orkney Edition hardcover
"A lifelong sufferer from psychosomatic illnesses, he was also an enthusiastic supporter of homeopathy, iridology and vegetarianism, as well as professing an interest in astrology and dream interpretation."
Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight by James Attlee, p 250
"The lessons begin with exhaustive lists of colours — Gamboge, Indian Yellow, Cadmium Yellow, Raw Umber, Yellow Ochre — with notes on combining them and colour wheels to show how they relate to one another."
Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight by James Attlee, p 62
"The suspended creatures turn their heads in the direction of the ghost in their midst. Gryphons and foxes and wyverns stare at him with glossy black eyes."
"I turn over twice, bed of embers, taken in by risk, violated by the speed of this century that has turned the heads of so many ardent worshipers of the State, God of Modern Times, on a quest for progress; Italy lulled by fascination for manufacture, signing pacts with flash-in-the-pan figures who ransacked their revolutionary period: sucked into the trajectory of bolstering the State and corrupting it in the process, creativity abandoned in sinecure and prebendary to set off in discovery of the proletarian era, with its canned announcements, lunar conquests, poetically inspired factories, how far we have drifted from that initial project that with millions in voice and deed made the country tremble, now returning to dissidence: Malevich, Mayakovsky, whose images and words capture oblivion, injecting us, in proletarian zeal, with the elixir that will purge us of our mystical vanity."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 237 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Those who can read shall read, and leave commentary to the others. To the first, joy is limited to reading, deciphering the sign; for the others the satisfaction and nourishment of their intelligence is achieved beyond: by interpretation, by unveiling, kashf."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 231 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Like the time in San'ā, at the close of an evening of qāt, relaxing mafraj brightened by polychrome windows, leaving at dawn, garden, circular openings, rings and acroteria, lacy cornices, walking to Hammam al-Maydān, dome and cistern, spray of water falling into concentric traces of itself, pool receiving reflection of sunbeam."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 215 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Apodyterium where women and adolescent girls shine, beauty assured, prey ravished the previous night from beyond the medina's boundary, in the new quarter, Rue de Serbie between the central market and the train station, behind the French Embassy, hair salon for well-born ladies, mistresses, and high society insiders, antechamber of the State, orgiastic pleasure palace, sex without despair, consume now, pay later, hairdresser as madam, inventing new couplings then undoing them, cashing in, or not, on the goodwill of bodies, we merge into sex for sale, soft bed for softer breasts, finding mother in woman, ignoring her fervor, offering ourselves up as products of exchange: generosity that reifies what little remains of the body, experimenting with the self as other; backsliding patriarchs, recalcitrant Messalinas: get back to the vengeful Bedouin Eros, squall that leaves nothing behind but a body now neutralized; women, split from your new alliances, surrender yourselves as demons even more debased than your city-dwelling sisters, take on the roving eye and daring of men: woman is an other."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 213 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Your family name, however, is another matter: originally Mu'addib, schoolmaster, teacher, prescriber of knowledge for its proper usage in society, dispenser of adab, a purveyor by name of good breeding and official culture, for the training of scribes and other executives of Arab power."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 207 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"May I suggest some samples of my remedies: I can tell you that sage loosens the tongue, kindles affection; and that hollowed-out aetites stones, when shaken like rattles, then placed on a woman in labor, will make for a quick delivery; likewise, rose of Jericho, macerated and then taken in liquid form, can also ease delivery for those of you ladies looking to bear children; donkey and horse hooves will likewise make birthing far less arduous, without exhaustion or excessive strain."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 199 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Labyrinth that lightens the oppressiveness squeezing the house's heart, that bruised organ; in the back, a trellis guides a tree, split Y-shaped to climb skyward on either side of a mashrabiya, stark monument."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 196 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"As for the male storytellers, let them learn a new trade, says Bakhta, chewing on the roasted thigh of a francolin hunted by our commandos around Tburba."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 186 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Here writing the text in Paris, swapping the anxiety of a vegetative state—progressing extravagantly—for kerria bouquets of text, great golden bunches naming the self, intermingled discipline of questioning, perfected into something other than a string of exiles, banishment, migration: rather, living in search of an excuse to sail off and prosper as a merchant in Ecuador, for example, fleeing one's own haunted existence, stating lopsidedly once again the struggle against the impossible, happy not to own up to oneself, namely, a destiny of dullness."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 175 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Fātima steps over those motionless bodies caught up in what they're protesting; following in Fātima's footsteps, I enter the high-ceilinged room, airy and light, slender columns, exaggerated by entasis, shaft topped by a capital, a typically Tunisoise interpretation of composite order, the capital itself topped by a tall impost."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 173 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"This Ba'adiyīn cupola, petals brightly salient on the calotte, a play of walls and openings, image of seashell and grape leaf, gathering their compartments into a central stem ending in the cupola faced with volutes, plaster worked into floral patterns, itself receptacle of figures, broken lines, curves and inter-curves, arabesque of line projected into space, perfect Almoravid accomplishment based upon the transposition of the principles of Islamic decoration, flora and planar geometry, to an architecture lending volume to flat motifs, rutilant container, a balance of breaches cleverly circulating blue sky: what uncertain solitude, what southerliness made possible this achievement by interpretation of register, audacity of one who emerges from the desert to impose the notion of unification, to attain an ideal to be formulated centuries later by a Borromini, a Guarini, to celebrate by monument the feast of Catholic power, triumphant propagator of faith after overcoming its schismatic trauma?"
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 160-161 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Fez shines with a light unattainable elsewhere. Some of its gatherings are truly worthy of admiration; I'll say nothing of the sacred intensity of the patron saint's mausoleum where votive offerings pile up, Moulay Driss, fātiha of the perverse, nor will I go on about the ironwork, paintings, the delicacy of its architectures, medersas and mosques more so than its palaces; and its artisans, manual or mental, certainly do take one to a higher plane: that weaver who took you in and spoke in inflammatory terms, that other host who took up residence in Fez after unraveling many of the mysteries and ambiguities hidden in the landscape that it occupies: think of the Swiss convert who pursued the tradition of certain nineteenth-century English alchemists, and who came to live in Fez, peace and quiet for anyone who believes in the possibility of social noninterference and the marginality to revive, through the body and the city, a tradition that has elsewhere disappeared."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 156-157 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"This street attracts dust, but I wouldn't trade it for the corniche road that makes the Nile unreal, flaming like some fake sunset. They built it a few years back: ever since Russians started arriving by the thousands to build the dam, the city has completely changed."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 140 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Spectacle of vengeance and loathing, I remember my youth and the hilqa tradition, circular gatherings at Rahbat al-Ghanam, the eating of a live scorpion, treacherously struggling between the swallower's teeth: I don't deserve the sting you've inflicted, he shouts! Secure in his rights and in his organism's immunity thanks to vast experience with venomous stings and bites, deadly to the uninitiated, he raged and bit down on the creature, hideous cracking, attenuated by the highly active theriac, an ancestral potion in use among those who fraternize with venom-dispensing reptiles: solidarity, philter of perils, syrup mixed with blood such that the body adapts unharmed to more lethal toxins."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 134 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"The bard's voice slows down and, after the unfathomable and contradictory flow of words, grows vindictive, blaming all the opposing currents that crisscross the hall, sound like light filtering through in equal measure, music of the heavens where each beam by its sound fools the ear or lulls it into sleep: various shafts of light play upon the exalted heads, upon the symbols of each guild in bright, primary colors, a dominant green, deep as inexpressible blue, a quiver running through the branches of a century-old cedar; red, of neither fire nor blood, the deep shade of habit, restful to the eye; white encircling waves, desert effluvia; black, to obscure the names on tombs by night at the unheralded hour of sanctification that weight upon shoulders, burnūs of lemony wool with a fringe curiously embroidered with bister bees, with glitter-tipped emeralds."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 126 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Outside, musicians, placard carriers, and guildsmen are jostling, intense crowd of a thousand hues, discrete voices intoning improvisations, each flowing autonomous, an effortless tarab, barely contained joy."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 124 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
""The Bride of the Book," a sūra that used to intrigue me because of its mysterious double sonority, its indefinitely repeated doubling, all in the name of the twofold, sun, star, moon, Orient, Occident, tree, seed, scale, weight: two of each kind, two seas divided by that which separates, barzakh, isthmus, two lands, twice Eden and two others beyond, two springs, ruby and pearl: and to coral I wanted to add carnelian."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 107 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"See the towering height of the Sultan Hassan mosque: there, the walls soar higher than cathedrals, shrinking the view of the sky captured by the confines of its courtyard, as defined by its four iwān: patch of blue so moving, unleashing the sobs so avidly yearned for, liberating the body."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 104 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"But what a mistake to have assembled limbs from fresh corpses to marinate in formaldehyde; you should have let them all macerate in a natron solution."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 92 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Could it be they've all left, slyly under cover of night, one of those mass departures encouraged by Zionist propaganda, emptying Tiznit or so many other Berber Ksours, such as Ifran in the Lesser Atlas Mountains, scree and tattoo on the rock face, heat like a furnace as we pass through the scattered argan trees, relatively dense prelude to the desert."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 91 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Into the leather-crafts souk, fragrance of hides tanned with sumac and nutgall, shadow striated with light, green the dominant color, metonymy of the city."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 86 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Politically shrewd, pleasure-seeking, a great friend to the hāra, he speaks the language of all-night revelry, respects Jewish customs and holidays, learned their poetry, recites Genesis in Aramaic, has uncovered the secrets of cabalistic interpretation, settles disputes regarding peripateticism of the Toledano and Hispanically Judeo-Arab sort, contests Avicenna's theory of emanation, combines discursive reason with the solemnity of the vagina, delights in elliptical and allusive language, lover of several Arab and Jewish entertainers, old-fashioned in taste and dress, a word lover, heartbreaker, keeper of the night, nocturnal wing, lunar matrix of riddles, noria cascading water: creaking waterwheel, wood imbibed, whispering trickle, jasmine and sweet summer, hatred of the occupier and what came before, neither is of us by body, by will: mockery of the cops and other prospective betrayers who, once they've agreed to kill, nonetheless seek to save face."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 84-85 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Ariana: settlement of Jews and Andalusian refugees cohabiting, light of white and blue, tidy streets, town squares like little stage sets, harlequin or Punch and Judy, graveyard poignantly earthbound, salt plain culminating in a shott, then sand and sea."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 80-81 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Everyone's at it, playing and parleying, circles within circles, sacred arcaded courtyard revived, hypostyle hall left to the more resourceful among them to revitalize prayer and ritual, the ten-arched loggia open to the street, where over here shkubba players keep an eye on cheaters, over there aces take all, somewhere the sound of dice and dominos, elsewhere a game of chess between two refined elderly gentlemen, pederasts surrounded by handsome boys making faces and gesticulating, sticking out tongues at any eye that lingers too long."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 78 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Living words of experience, officialdom laid bare, toothless mouths accustomed to chewing furtive speech in rage at a ghetto of words with its rules and laws, at the foundation of a cenacle in need of a Judas."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 75 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"The terrified dignitaries find no safety even when locked in their fortress houses, those not already abandoned and squatted in by legions of the rural poor who break in and settle by force in those now degraded monuments to another time, former palaces become oukalas, palatial slums."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 73-74 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
http://archnet.org/library/sites/one-site.jsp?site_id=3951 says: "Oukala designates an in-town caravanserai, a type of hotel with rooms rented on a daily or weekly basis. Since the 1930s, the old city of Tunis, the Médina was strongly affected by a population shift; the intense rural migration and the departure of its urban gentry. Many private residences and monuments of the old city were "oukalaised", i.e., turned into multi-family dwellings that sometimes sheltered up to twenty households, often the less fortunate ones, in unacceptable sanitary conditions."
"What is this plan of yours, O carefree children born yesterday?—calm down, lest you share in the flames of hell, warns a slave to the dhikr, sanctimoniously reciting the names of Allah and turning in circles since the dawn of the century."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 72 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Immobile, I have journeyed through lands and encountered saints, archive of the world, from Tafilalet to Senoussi country, their white domes dazzling hilltop and desert; sacred lentisks, holy ash tree, blessed waters, healing springs, benediction and grace upon your relentless desire to be."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 69 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Cleansed of what she had interiorized as an inevitable defilement, an odor that she preferred not to name, her periodic chastity; bad, black blood, she would say, yet not so bad for less delicate nostrils, curve of the waist embellished, complexion deep brown, eyes lined in kohl, thick hair, wavy, shining, black; teeth white pearls, gums like rubies or coral, rubbed with siwak, Capparis sodata, fragrance and sap of chewed bark."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 48 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Different vision of bodies for sale, the Middle Atlas Mountains, desert's edge, mausim, harvest festival time, ritual prostitution at rural shrines, Moulay Ibrahim and elsewhere, outside the city, beyond the constraints of urbanity, theology, business, and all the various trades that organize the history of a city like Fez that extends its influence well beyond its borders, tending to centralize and cancel out all difference, incorporating the well-to-do of other towns and regions, Souss, Tafraout, Tetouan, Taroudant, even the intractable Marrakech, into a common and coherent project facilitating the exploitation of all bodies; ensuring, thanks to the new port inherited from the former colonizers, an open-door policy, and with the blessings of the royal Cherifian family, quashing any demonstration of local power unless this be tiny and fetishistic, confining its deviance to the mountainous backcountry."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 47-48 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Drag queen color and light, shake that thing, dime-store exotic, sailors in a port of call, gobbling down leftover couscous chilled by the pathetic eyes of a fiddler playing with neither melancholy nor hysteria, sawing away at his kamanjah, held in upright position on one knee: Tangiers, rival of continents, from its perch obsessed by two seas, tumbling seasons scatter into color-splashed crowds, throngs, dense in places: waning lives or former glories ravaged, shouldering the insignificance of what had been their worldly past, walking Pekingese on a leash, silk kimono revealing wrinkled, once-legendary thighs."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 44-45 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Writing mixes up the seasons, resolving the usual jumble of hot and cold, summer or winter: it reflects the messiness of the body more than any primordial law: it is chaos more than fiat, a battle of giants meant to obstruct the desire to invent oneself according to some divine order: it is with us, a descent, subterranean, underworld, regression, a groping toward totality: it is the gallery that cuts through the edifice end to end, the ambo breaking up the uniformity of narrative space."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 43 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"I won't say that what appears here are the words of a drunk. No, it's a dead man breathing life into his dulia, fragility that entangles the body and keeps it from any attempt to gather up all the inaccessible desire that blows away so jauntily on the breeze."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 41 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"As for the body, which our erudite voyeur pretends to ignore, it helps dig the ditch that will unearth the compromising roots of his clerical genealogy, the scholarly and social core of a family theology that realizes its golden age is now over, impervious to healthy criticism, manducation of the immutable precepts lying virtually undisturbed these past decades by those discreet stirrings that the surrounding vacuum causes to resonate until they finally swell into an event of sorts, a slender flame commensurate with our respectfully narrow national history."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 32 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Fragrance of sardine and harissa escape the grocer's shop, run by a Jerbi, stained gray smock, full moon face, zebiba on his forehead, mark of the pious who bow in prayer, greed, and acquisition of wealth, honing their instinctive sense of deprivation."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 31 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"And what of the analogy between sex and tree, the palm whose fermented nectar, a mere drop on the tongue, transports us to the bed of Eros, ardor impatient to flee the Saharan heat by immersion in the sweat and wax of this henna-tinted, finely tattooed body—a minbar on a hip, the Ka'aba on a thigh, winglets on her shaved pubis—bodies swelling together until the eye of the needle is opened and threaded, freeing you, putting you beyond limits: musk, floral essence, mingling of honeys?"
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 15 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
"Here-elsewhere: with deadly violence, a mixture of countries traveled, pieces of a life torn to shreds, a body scraped off the ground, appearance peculiar and untidy, blood stains; sweat, strife, toil: incursion of rebel assegais where the mountain rises up in fortification."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 6 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
"At first it was a discrete clinamen, a slight deviation in the orderly descent of textual atoms—a not absent in one place and slipped in somewhere else."
Upstaged by Jacques Jouet, translated by Leland de la Durantaye, p 28
"To watch an actor in profile is a special pleasure for the connoisseur, all the more so when that actor is unknown, unexpected—and perhaps acting for the first and last time. Such an actor is, as Flavy would later remark, a hapax of the stage."
Upstaged by Jacques Jouet, translated by Leland de la Durantaye, p 18
"The headmaster turned to look again upon that which he could hardly abide: his life's work disintegrating in flames, with scant hope of phlogistic phoenix rising from its ashes."
"They are quite the opposite, their altricial nature demanding that they be nursed and nurtured for a time, or else they should die in the crib and the experiment come to naught."
""But a rather odd sort of Arcadia, orographically speaking, for the valley that would come to be known as Dingley Dell lies within what is known as the Allegheny Front—the dividing line between the eastern edge of the Allegheny Plateau escarpment…"
"…and the lower Allegheny Mountains," broke in Mr. Graham, excitedly."
"Artisans and tradesmen of the working class used Westminster when necessary to ply their trade within the weazen, dilapidated neighbourhood that now included Scadger's new domicile, and now and then lowly men in Scadger's impoverished league were driven by necessity to venture in the opposite direction to bear the sort of cold reception that had come to Scadger in Skettles' apothecary shop."
"We've tried large doses of every remedy that can be compounded: bromide of potassium, belladonna, chloride of aluminum, ferrous sulfate, quinine, tartar of arsenic, stramonium tobacco."
"In his youth he had wrestled upon a mat in the manner of the Greeks and had downed the largest buck in the eastern wood as was ever felled by bow and arrow—that record holding itself in perpetuity given the fact that hunting in both woods was now prohibited (though the law was broken now and again, almost exclusively by members of the congenitally-venatic Scadger clan)."
"As the family drew nearer that point which offered our best vantage, I saw that Muntle had identified the brother correctly; there was Harry and there was his wife Matilda, each drest in cast-off and multiply-mended clothing, the husband in an old worn and faded blue camlet coat that did not befit the warm season, dragging a large gunnysack, which, no doubt, contained most of his family's paltry possessions."
""Clive—the junior Clive and not the senior Clive who is presently chopping his way through the Amazon jungle—fears that I will go and tangle myself up with that fugitive elapid. They think I'm daft sometimes, these Pellers. Now I ask you, young man: if I were so precipitant as to go draping myself with poisonous fugitive elapids, would I have survived even half of my ninety-four years? Dear me. Now you are but a boy. Do you know what the word 'precipitant' means?""
From Merriam-Webster, a bryophite is "any of a division (Bryophyta) of nonflowering plants comprising the mosses, liverworts, and hornworts."
"Newman vowed to shorten his three-day journey by a full day—that is, if the weather remained clement and if his Dinglian shoes continued to hold themselves securely upon his feet and if he was not stopped along the way by any of those who wished to do him harm, and if—finally—he could navigate his way through the woods, where the sun did not shine, and trust the moss that generally grew on the northern side of the trees to act as his bryophitic compass."
"Alas, my sister-in-law had received in exchange for her maternal overture to the sulky and stone-faced thirteen-year-old a harsh rebuff, delivered in the girl's wonted insolent fashion: "Sit for several days betwixt you and your damask-nosed crony Miss Snigsworth? Watch the two of you tossing off your gallipots of grog as if it were some ancient nepenthe? Pardon me if I decline the invitation this week or any other week, Mama, but I would rather have sharp iron nails driven into my skull.""
"Nor did he—the grandson, on his mother's side, of a top-sawyer artisan of the Folkstone Furniture Works—behold a palmette upon the headboard, or a rinceau carving gracing the footboard."
I didn't know the "drinking glass filled to the brim" sense of it 'til now.
""Don't tell me you haven't had orange juice before."
"Only a couple of times. It's very expensive. It comes from the orangery and one drinks it only on very special occasions. I had a glass on my eleventh birthday. Can I have more? Can you bumper it?"
"Bumper it?" asked Evelyn, the mother, as she poured.
I knew about the bird but not about the cushions. As in:
"Mrs. Potterson nodded. "I had no idea that the Pyegraves were in such want of money. Why, he's the most prosperous draper and upholsterer in the Dell. Every squab upon which you sit was stuffed and sewn in his shop.""
"But who should not believe Dingley Dell to be the most beautiful vale in all the world (if one were to stand with the scarred and scabbed Southern Coal Ridge to one's back), with its fields of rye and oats and corn and mangold set in eye-pleasing checkerboard upon the agricultural northland, and plump rolling downs emeralding the valley's southern reach."
"As I crept along through the gloom, past engravings of wisent and aurochs and woolly rhinos, it occurred to me that I really had no clue what would drive someone to wriggle through a pitch-black tunnel to cover the walls with images that only another, similarly driven soul would see."
"Sleeping with the Enemy" by Elizabeth Kolbert, p 75 of the August 15th & 22nd, 2011 issue of the New Yorker
"Among his charges: two bookcases filled with real and fake books; twelve banquet chairs; three candelabra; a mesh of branches that entangles Touchstone; a wicker horse; a fake deer carcass; a stuffed boar; red grape juice that doubles as wine; three tins of lychee nuts, for Gloucester's eyeballs; a bicycle and an iPod for Romeo (some liberties are taken with time period); twelve bike pumps; six Maglites; a wheelbarrow; a throne; eight skull masks; a bouquet of fake roses; a wreath with removable plastic flowers; three black parasols; a pipe for Juliet's nurse; a box of Lion chocolate bars ("We bought them in England, 'cause we weren't sure if we could get them out here," Wimperis said); a glass ashtray lined with K-Y Jelly ("If it gets knocked over, it's better than using water"); walkie-talkies; forty litres of stage blood ("It's quite sugary—like what you use to make candy floss"); a gold-on-black invitation to the Capulets' party; a metal claw with a protruding blade (for Tybalt); four short javelins and five tall ones; three fake crossbows; approximately a hundred swords and daggers (most swords are custom-made to suit the height and weight of a particular actor, and the dents from jousting are filed down between shows); ten rifles with bayonets, for the French Army in "King Lear"; ten without bayonets, for the British; the bloodied head of Decius Brutus; a box of love poems, which drop from the ceiling in "As You Like It" ("They've all been fireproofed"); one Enfield revolver; three Webley revolvers; three AK-56 assault rifles ("These are mine. I'm joking!"); four bags of plastic snow; a brace of fake pheasants; raisins for Audrey; a charango …"
- "Checklist" by Michael Schulman, p 20 of the August 8, 2011 issue of the New Yorker
"He looked pale and battered. There was a rug over his knees. But his straw-colored hair was neatly plastered down, his high "masher" collar was immaculate, and his three-buttoned jacket in dark lovat was the very glass of fashion."
The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman, p 274 of the 2008 Knopf paperback edition
"Finally she lost her temper, and threw an inkwell, shrieking in a way that didn't need translating even if Becky had known the German for "pernicated procrastinators" and "gotch-gutted Goths.""
The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman, p 130 of the 2008 Knopf paperback edition
"Damn fool, he thought. You walked right into it, you clown. Because now he'd have even less freedom than before: Gödel would pin him down in some poodle-faking routine when he ought to be out hunting this Spanish mummer—if she really did exist, and if it really was her."
The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman, p 81 of the 2008 Knopf paperback edition
"The Channel was boisterous, but seasickness is not a fit subject for discussion; any book on etiquette will tell you that. And etiquette was at the front of Becky's mind as soon as they reached dry land, for once they were on the train, the countess began to teach her and Adelaide a thousand things they'd never dreamed of: how to address the chancellor, the precise difference in rank between the younger son of a count and the elder son of a baron, how to peel an orange at table, the right sort of conversational opening to make to a bishop—every conceivable kind of etiquettical topic, until their heads rang."
The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman, p 51 of the 2008 Knopf paperback edition
"Hals's relentless jolliness isn't confined to his genre scenes of rollicking topers, such as "Young Man and Woman in an Inn" (1623). The euphoric hero hoists a glass while being attended with fawning approval by a prostitute, a dog, and an innkeeper—three parties, according to a Dutch adage of the time, whose affections come at a cost."
"Haarlem Shuffle" by Peter Schjeldahl, in the August 8, 2011 issue of the New Yorker, pg 75
"Julia had logged another couple of telephone-pole paint blobs, one of which she'd stopped and studied quite closely using some kind of visual cantrip that he hadn't caught because she hadn't wanted him to catch it—she actually hid it with one hand as she cast it with the other."
"They should have been facing down bellowed challenges from black knights bearing the vergescu, or solving thorny theological dilemmas posed by holy hermits."
"Quentin walked to the very stern and looked out over the wake, swept clean and crushed into foam by the weight of their passage. He felt good and right here. He patted the Muntjac's worn old taffrail: unlike most things and most people in Fillory, the Muntjac needed Quentin, and Quentin hadn't let her down."
I didn't know the "A person who tricks or coerces others into service as sailors or soldiers" definition of this word, but that's how Philip Pullman uses it, here, though he's using it more generally as "a person who tricks or coerces others":
""Where are the crimps working from?" said Goldberg.
"Off the Pier Head, sir. St. Katharine's Basin. See, there's sixty, maybe seventy people to come ashore, maybe more. They offload 'em at the Pier Head, then they can get away straight up Little Thames Street. You seen all them cabs? The cabmen got wind of this trade in the last month or so. They put a copper there regular now, to control 'em. There was nearly a hundred there last week."
He pushed off, then slipped the oars into the oarlocks and started to pull away with short, light strokes.
"What are crimps?" said Sally.
"Parasites," said Goldbergs. "Swindlers. Minor criminals. Those vultures you saw back there.""
The Tiger in the Well by Philip Pullman, p 237 of the Dell/Laurel-Leaf paperback
, -snefet, -snivet. A cuff on the ear or the side of the head: resp. late C.18–mid-19 (Grose, 1st ed.), then dial.; C.16 (Udall); C.16 (Palsgrave: OED). Perhaps a reduplication of whister, that which ‘whists’ or puts to silence; even so, -clister may pun clyster, an enema, while -snefet, -snivet may be cognate with the vv.
snite snivel. Perhaps orig. dial., as the Palsgrave locus indicates; certainly dial. are the variants whisterpoop (C.17–20), whistersniff (C.19–20), and whister-twister—which last (C.18–19) is certainly a punning reduplication. See also wisty-castor."
"There were dresses; there were nightgowns; there were precious christening robes made of lawn, which needed the finest and most delicate stitching to repair them; there were items she was making for sale to her regular customers—pretty lace gloves, shawls, fine handkerchiefs, embroidered blouses, goffered widow's caps, filmy muslin petticoats. Everything she owned was hauled out from its tissue paper wrappings and ripped to shreds."
The Shadow in the North by Philip Pullman, p 147 of the Knopf paperback edition
"They had a way of looking all around them, but not in the same time at the same direction, that reminded Brentford of a clockwork armillary sphere and that made him feel dizzy and ill at east just as when they talked very quickly to each other in some language no one understood."
"The Councillors, not knowing what to do, kept their hands up or stuck in mid-motion. She approached their dazed hebdomad and their startled servants, stiffening her backbone, cocking the hammers of her eyes."
"Brentford and the Scavengers passed through the gate to find the gigantic Varangian Guards silently lined up in a row, their barbed halberds pointed at the intruders, and quite impressive in their shining armour plates and morion helms."
"In the rear, a hatch in the floor led down to the hold, and flashlight in hand, Brentford checked once again that everything he needed, or hoped not to need, was there as he had ordered: pellets of Cornwallis zinc to recharge the motor fuel cells; one month's supply of "Vril-food," dried soups, pemmican cakes, cod roe, whey powder, aleuronate bread, bars of his favourite chocolate, lime juice, and coffee; a small sled and harness; a primus stove; a pharmacy; a 16-bore Paradox rifle with boxes of shotgun shells and cartridges; a caribou-fur sleeping bag; spare warm clothes; oil-cloth tarpaulins; ice-axes and guncotton powder; a toolbox with everything necessary to build and live in a snow house or an improvised cave; a captive oil-silk balloon that the could send up to project light signals on—everything that could come in useful to prolong his life or his agony."
"A steady diet of opiate pills, Freezeland Fags, Wormwood Star Absinthe, bad coffee, and almost no food had turned his body into a thin, taut, anatomical écorché, with no muscles and all the nerves showing, the whole offering little or no protection against the outer world."
"Gabriel knew the story from his father, from the time when he had been Portcullis Pursuivant of the City's Civil Registry Records at the House of Honours and Heraldry. It was a story that his father liked to tell a little bit too often and it was he who had started spreading the rumour around various bars and shebeens until he had been deemed a nuisance and "put on ice.""
"Behind those statues were mirrored doors that led to the various parts of the building. The Council Cabinet's was opposite the entrance archway, and this was where Brentford was introduced by one of the gigantic Varangian guards of the Council of Seven's Security Company, who wore the usual uniform of figure-eight ruff, black doublet and black and white striped pluderhosen and held a halberd in his enormous hand."
Wikipedia says: "Pluderhosen, a Northern European form of pansied slops with a very full inner layer pulled out between the panes and hanging below the knee" - and further says that pansied slopes are "round hose characterized by the addition of a layer of panes, or strips of fabric running from the waistband to the leg band. These are commonly referred to as "pumpkin" pants." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluderhosen)
"To the obsessively obsidional Gabriel, this was his Troy, where he would defend himself to the last. His books, lined up with a compact precision, were the battlement from which he would shoot the poisoned arrows of his wit."
"The highbrow or hurried reader will be content with knowing that her "As White As..." was said to have caught the very marrow of the icy city. But that is of little use to really measure the remanence of her name to the olde-New."
"He entered the pub, noted for its remarkable painting of a rather muddy and dark whale-hunting scene, asked for a Scoresby Stout and a Specksioneer Sandwich, and went to the Pneumatic Post Booth."
""How much I regret it, that I am not reputed to perform random acts of kindness," answered Gabriel, as coldly as he could, which was not much, for a natural distaste for all kinds of authority quickly gave him the williwas in such circumstances."
"Though the weather was rather chilly and wet, soldiers in fur-lined trapper hats, mittens, and kamiks were loitering in front of the barracks, playing curling or some rather clumsy soccer, with an air of relaxed resignation to the well-known drabness of the soldiering life."
The epigraph to Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat is a quote from "The True Levellers Standard Advanced," attributed differently (I imagine to fit into the world of the book). So, the epigraph and its in-book attribution:
"It was shewed us by Vision in Dreams, and out of Dreams, That that should be the Place we should begin upon; And though that Earth in view of Flesh, be very barren, yet we should trust the Spirit for a blessing.
A Blast on the Barren Land, or the Standard of True Community Advanc'd, Presented to the Sons of Adam by Henry Hotspur, Being a Platform to Plant the Waste Land Of the Northern Isles & Septentrional Parts, & to Restore the Regiment of Commonwealth, Printed in the Yeer 1649"
"He was wearing royal blue breeches of watered silk, a damask waistcoat of white and gold, and a quilted velvet smoking jacket ornamented with brandenbourgs."
"Then she opened the door of the cold and silent furnace and stuck her hand inside. 'Eureka!' she shouted, with a loud, metallic echo, for there at the bottom of the furnace, with a sparse scattering of ashes and one forgotten clinker, lay the clue!"
Spiderweb for Two by Elizabeth Enright, p 195 of the 2008 paperback
The "young female pig" definition was new to me, too. I just came across it:
"All the cattle brought handsome sums, and then it was the pigs' turn. One by one they were displayed: the gilts, the shoats, the cranky old sow and her litter of half-grown piglets."
Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright, pp 239-240 of the 2002 hardcover edition
"Also there were sundry inquiries from private persons, such as the Delacey brothers, Cedric and Fitzroy, who wished to know the plans for the Meeker dogs and a certain Hampshire shoat among the livestock."
Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright, p 202 of the 2002 hardcover edition
"The dragonflies hung above the still surface like turquoise needles and woodpeckers knocked at the dead willow branches up above. The opposite bank was a rich jungle of jewelweed and boneset."
Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright, pp 112-113 of the 2002 hardcover edition
"Dave Addison turned out to be a star swimmer. He could do a jackknife without forgetting to unfold in time, and a swan dive without forgetting to point his toes. He could do the crawl, the trudgeon, the butterfly breast stroke, and stay underwater longer than any of them."
Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright, p 49 of the 2002 hardcover edition
"The living room was full of things: tables, and lots of chairs, all with crocheted antimacassars; pictures and pennants and fans on the wall; a big melodeon at one end of the room with very old sheet music on it; and in the wide doorway there were portieres all made of beads which rattled like rain on a tin roof when Mrs. Wheelwright brushed against them."
The Four-Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright, p 56 of the 2002 hardcover edition
"The Wheelwrights' house was very interesting, though rather dim because all the windows were smothered under a profusion of potted plants. There were red geraniums, and fuchsias whose blossoms hung from their stems like costly earrings, and great overgrown begonias, and calceolarias all covered with little speckled calico pocketbooks."
The Four-Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright, p 54 of the 2002 hardcover edition
"Mrs. Oliphant was very glad to see them. She wore a suit made out of pongee, a hat with a green veil, an amethyst necklace, a lapis lazuli necklace, and a silver one with her eyeglasses on it."
The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright, pp 165-166 of the 2008 paperback edition
"Dark-green water in lakes like this, and salt water with big waves and a fishy smell; and water coming loud over a dam, and water in brooks all full of caddis houses and green moss. And water in swamps with cat-tails growing out of it. And yellow mud-puddle water that you can wade in, with the mud as soft as butter between your toes."
The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright, p 129 of the 2008 paperback edition
"Her name was Miss Buff-Towers and she was related in some way to an earl, a fact she was very proud of and never forgot. She had long front teeth, the color of old piano keys, and a huge coiled arrangement of braided hair on top of her head like an orderly eagle's nest. She was a kindhearted creature but she knew as much about raising children as I know about raising coati-mundis. (I'm not even sure what they are."
The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright, pp 35-36 of the 2008 paperback edition
"Mii knows the intricate mycelia of relations and events that are expressed in the gestures of the statues, surge into the points of daggers held over the breasts of enemies and the tips of fingers reaching out for conciliation; she knows the thousands of images and stories of the world of statues that have never achieved expression yet pulsate in stiff gestures of the body."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 245 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
"When at twenty-three the dazzlingly beautiful wife of the king is appointed president of the Devel Academy, an assembly of venerable old men who have dedicated their lives to science, jokes are cracked on all the islands of the archipelago. But the jesters are in error—Uddo has an extensive knowledge of chemistry, transformation in metals, runes, augury, archaeology, metaphysics, geometry, architecture, statics, boat-building and building of labyrinths, demonology, astronomy and haruspicy."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 198 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
"The islanders would often ask me about the food where I came from, so once I used several cuttlefish mushrooms to fashion for them the fare on the table of a Czech pub, with plates of goulash and dumplings, a smaller plate with brawn, a basket of bread rolls, several half-litres of beer and glasses of rum, adding while I was at it, an open pack of cigarettes and an ashtray with cigarette ends in it."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 141 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
"I played on boards whose squares changed in the course of a single game. They were made of squares of darker and lighter sand sprinkled on the board. In the course of the game the wind would blow the sand about, into long patches run through with different colours, until the board became a whirl of darker and lighter twists, reminiscent of the jaspé bindings of books come to life in dreams; and the pieces would pick their way through them, before crumbling and blending in with the sand of the squares."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 128 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
""You're right," the girl conceded. "You should just know that the right triangle ABC plays an important role in all of this and that Leibniz realized that if we reduce the horizontal base of this triangle, correspondingly we reduce the second cathetus so that the triangle will always remain homothetic; the relation of the two catheti maintains a constant value which is a characteristic of the curve of the line at point I."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, pp 112-113 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
""It's simple, I'll show you," said the thief, taking off her black glove and drawing a quadrant in the snow with her index finger. But as she stretched to describe its base and sagitta, the y beneath her gave a fearful crack and in terror she grabbed Baumgarten by his dressing gown. He suggested she leave off the explanations: for the listener's understanding of the story of the wrecked boat a knowledge of infinitesimal calculus was probably not altogether necessary."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 112 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
"At point I, in the upper part of the quadrant, a tangent was made, and this—at points A and B—sprouted two metal abscissae, one parallel to line x and the other to line y. They intersected at point C inside the quadrant, thus giving the catheti of a right triangle whose hypotenuse was the segment AB in the tangent."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 112 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
"But the majority of the photos there on the desk were of the inside of the cave, its gloomy recesses lit harshly by an electric flash. Evidently the cave had many years earlier been transformed into a speos."
The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 106 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
"Leaning against the wall to the right of this were two dark beams, crossed, beaten together at their centres to look like a great "X"; he imagined these forming part of a framework used in the cutting of wood. Resting against this rotten saltire were the remnants of a dilapidated door, upon which were quivering the flakes of a cream-coloured varnish with which the door must once have been painted; the door's centre panel still bore a brass handle."
The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 75 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
"One American defense consultant told me that as yet there is "no smoking calutron," although, like many Western government officials, he is convinced that Iran is intent on becoming a nuclear state sometime in the future."
-"Iran and the Bomb" by Seymour M. Hersh, in the June 6, 2011 issue of the New Yorker, p 30
"Chilled half-lobster, with an unsightly smear of tomalley vinaigrette, gets by on its winning personality (it's well steamed and satisfying, and it's lobster, after all."
- Shauna Lyon, "Tables for Two: The John Dory Oyster Bar" in the May 30, 2011 issue of the New Yorker, p 18
"These objects—darkly stained wood-and-aluminium structures with additional elements of fabric, leather, and sinamay (a stiff cloth often used in millinery)—are domestically scaled, their simple armatures recalling ambiguous sections of furniture."
- From a review of a Claire Barclay show in Art in America, December 2010, review by Lee Triming, p 158
"From what Sinkler had seen, the man worked as hard as the road crews and had about as much to show for it. Twenty years older and too much of a gink to realize what Lucy understood at eighteen."
"The Trusty" by Ron Rash in the May 23, 2011 issue of the New Yorker, p 73
Ah, weasand. I'd forgotten about this word but came across it again today: "The gullet was separated and the weasand was drawn from the windpipe. They cleared the chest of its entrails."
The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds, p 49 of the Penguin paperback
"In the beginning I used to get postcards. At first they were warm and even jovial: Everything is fine. I'm thinking of joining the Chilean Speleological Society but don't worry, it won't interfere with my poetry, if anything the two pursuits are complementary."
"The plumber pitied me so much I had to press money on him, I tell W. He didn't want to take it. He'd never seen anything like it, he said, standing, looking up at the ceiling. He seemed hypnotised. He wouldn't leave, but just stood there, looking. And even when he went out the front door, he was still shaking his head. —'Howay, it's terrible, man'."
"But W.'s studies of ancient Greek are not progressing well, he says. It's the aorist, it defeats him every time. W.'s bumping his head against the ceiling of his intelligence, he says. I often have that feeling, I tell him. —'No, you're just lazy', W. says."
"There is the old village itself and its vestigial claims to "authenticity"; the church (relatively new as southwestern churches go, having replaced an older one in 1884); the 18-year-old upscale development to the west for contrast (and for an architectural tour of another nature; it's a good survey of imagined "Santa Fe style"); the movie set in the distance the curandero's "office" with its skull on a pole; what used to be here and there (scattered adobe ruins); the quite new community center and the brand new firehouse (partially built by community work parties); yard art; an extensive petroglyph site; the cloud shows and encompassing light on ranchlands and mountains; the (diminishing) biological diversity of the creek and bosque; the mouth-watering tamales at the Tienda Anaya; and, of course, the people."
"By analyzing this "modern art of everyday expression" as it appears in accounts of spatial practices, J.-F. Augoyard discerns in it two especially fundamental stylistic figures: synecdoche and asyndeton."
The Practice of Everyday Life by Michel de Certeau, p 101
"They include the kinds of relationship this enunciation entertains with particular paths (or "statements") by according them a truth value ("alethic" modalities of the necessary, the impossible, the possible, or the contingent), an epistemological value ("epistemic" modalities of the certain, the excluded, the plausible, or the questionable) or finally an ethical or legal value ("deontic" modalities of the obligatory, the forbidden, the permitted, or the optional)."
The practice of everyday life by Michel de Certeau, p 99
"The Jews who stand between the sky and the city's roofs stop the rain, and when it's very cold, at Christmas, the snow falls on their shtreimels and caftans."
Curriculum Vitae by Yoel Hoffmann, translated by Peter Cole, 86
"Now was Rusty a childish Binelli-issued nickname for his redheaded sister, or was it a reference to the scavenged nail that poked one or the other young cordwainer in the big toe and began a period of infectious infirmary that would lead to the necessity of finding a crafty activity to fill the long hours of bedridden days, an activity of which the children failed to tire, though strength returned; no by god, they never tired of this, the smell of leather, the meticulous stitching, the shodding of the people, the heady glamour, the creative juices stirring within pent-up loins, loins that hungered for the tickle of a stray red wisp tossed carelessly past a hollowed cheek—well, it is all conjecture and as such not for this report to contemplate. Shoes were made, many shoes."
Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles by Kira Henehan, p 48
"Kohlrabi, spigarello, and an ever-changing variety of mushrooms (maitakes, honshemejis, and shiitakes) are among the ingredients he uses to enhance crowd-pleasing entrées like smoked duck breast, grilled polenta, and our favorite, the perfectly seared swordfish that follows."
The New Brooklyn Cookbook by Melissa Vaughan and Brendan Vaughan, p 29
"In Yakushkin's memoir, he spends pages explaining the "artel" system the prisoners devised whereby everybody, those receiving generous stipends from home as well as those receiving little, contributed to a common account to ensure that no prisoner ever had to be in need."
"At one end of the village, the old Trakt crossed a small river called the Esaulovka on an ancient ruined bridge. Its gray wooden crossbeams supported the ricketiest of planking; the planks were sawn lumber but the beams showed only the marks of a bladed tool like a froe or an adze."
"Among his potential allies were worthies like the murderously anti-Bolshevik Cossack atamans Grigory Semeyonov and Ivan Kalmykov, who each controlled a stretch of Far Eastern railroad line."
"After salmon started coming to the nets, the food improved. Valentina made sautéed salmon steaks, and a soup of salmon heads and potatoes called ukha, and fried salmon liver and salmon milt with kasha, and salmon eggs and butter on thinly sliced black bread."
"Picking up a boletus bigger than any I'd seen in my life, I hurried back across the tundra to the cabin. Everyone in our party had gone in there to drink tea and vodka and get warm."
"But in The Gulag Archipelago, I had read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's musings on the proper memorial for the forced labor camps of Stalin's time: "I visualize…," Solzhenitsyn wrote, "somewhere on a high point in the Kolyma, a most enormous Stalin, just such a size as he himself dreamed of, with mustaches many feet long and the bared fangs of a camp commandant, one hand holding the reins and the other wielding a knout with which to beat his team of hundreds of people harnessed in fives and all pulling hard. This would also be a fine sight on the edge of the Chukchi Peninsula next to the Bering Strait.""
"While improvising a fishing pole for Katya from a willow sapling, I cut deep into the ball of my thumb with my barlow pocketknife, and I made a fuss about that."
"Part of The Secret History tells of the campaign of Genghis's son Jochi in 1207 against the People of the Forest. The campaign succeeded, and the People of the Forest submitted to Jochi, bringing him "white gerfalcons, white geldings, and black sables.""
"Swann will hold two auctions, beginning with a selection of ocean-liner and other transportation memorabilia (posters, photo albums, embossed china, and the like) on Feb. 3, followed by one of vintage posters, one of the house's mainstays, on Feb. 8. The latter sale celebrates all things brumal, especially sport, and includes a group of posters from the nineteen-thirties, forties, and fifties related to Dartmouth's rambunctious Winter Carnival."
"Galloway was authorized by the military to work on a specific set of threatening diseases that were considered potential weapons in war or in terrorism, including anthrax, smallpox, tularemia, plague, and the Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fevers."
"Going Viral" by David E. Hoffman, in The New Yorker, January 31, 2011, p 26
"He realizes everything at once like the climax of a bad Hindi musical. And then, with a certain horrid glee, he gets to the fundamental truth of it, the anagnorisis: This incident alone will keep us two old boys going for the next forty years. It is the story to end all stories. It is the gift that keeps on giving."
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, p 441 of the Vintage International paperback
"Naima had already changed out of her house galabia and into the hard fabric of her black dress, a veil wrapped tightly around her head, revealing the delicate shape of her skull."
"Naima" by Hisham Matar, in The New Yorker, January 24, 2011, p 64
""Oh, yes, surely day is de holy troot," said Hortense anxiously, fingering her plasticated carnations. "But at de same time, surely a Witness lady don' wan' look like a well, a buguyaga in de house of de Lord.""
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, p 321 of the Vintage International paperback
"Irie passed her the long hat pin that was sitting on top of a butter dish. Hortense set the plastic carnations straight on her hat and stabbed them fiercely, then brought the pin back up through the felt, leaving two inches of exposed silver sticking up from the hat like a German pickelhaube."
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, p 320 of the Vintage International paperback
""Irie, look at you! Pickney nah even got a gansey on—child must be freezin'! Shiverin' like a Mexico bean. Let me feel you. Fever! You bringin' fever into my house?"
It was important, in Hortense's presence, never to admit to illness. The cure, as in most Jamaican households, was always more painful than the symptoms."
White Teeth by Zadie Smth, p 316 of the Vintage International paperback
""You see, Jones," said Samad, "the real mistake the viceroy made was to give the Sikhs any position of power, you see? Just because they have some limited success with the kaffir in Africa, he says Yes, Mr. Man, with your sweaty fat face and your silly fake English mustache and your pagri balanced like a large shit on the top of your head, you can be an officer, we will Indianize the army; go, go and fight in Italy, Rissaldar Major Pugri, Daffadar Pugri, with my grand old English troops! Mistake!""
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, p 75 of the Vintage International paperback
"Two weeks later, as Archie checked their route to Sofia, to no one in particular Samad said, "I should not be here."
As usual, he was ignored, most fiercely and resolutely by Archie, who wanted somehow to listen.
"I mean, I am educated, I am trained. I should be soaring with the Royal Airborne Force, shelling from on high! I am an officer! Not some mullah, some sepoy, wearing out my chappals in hard service. My grandfather Mangal Pande"—he looked around for the recognition the name deserved, but, being met only with blank pancake English faces, continued—"was the great hero of the Indian Mutiny!"
Silence."
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, pp 74-75 of the Vintage International paperback
"These cases you can see are made from lapacho, a wood that has no cracks that insects can penetrate; I ordered the shelves especially: they are ten hardwood boards stuck together with an insect-repellent glue, and I put glass fronts on them because books obviously accumulate dust."
The House of Paper by Carlos María Domínguez, translated by Nick Caistor, pp 36-37
"I don't know what compelled me at age six to transplant a bunch of buttercups from the local non-playground at the bottom of our street to my father's garden. I don't know if my buttercups were of the cursed, bristly, early, hispid, creeping, bulbous, or common variety. They were yellow."
"Few visitors came to that room, and when they did, they had a tendency to ask, "Is this the bricks?" meaning Carl Andre's Equivalent VIII, made from, and consisting of, 120 firebricks, which to this day remains an exciting touchstone for art skeptics and philistines everywhere. I was delighted to be able to say, "No, it's not the bricks. It's the stones.""
The Lost Art of Walking by Geoff Nicholson, pp 65-66
"Instead of using various different words for walking, the Japanese use a common base verb, then add an assortment of phenomimes, which are used as adverbs. So aruku is the basic word meaning to walk, then chokochoko aruku is to toddle, noronoro aruku is to inch along, furafura aruku is to shamble or teeter, and zorozoro aruku is to swarm or cluster."
"then she goes over the clothes she needs, B said, above all drawers and a corset that fits like a glove, A said, she wants to keep her shape, and says she has too much belly, she ought to give up beer, B recalled, but that embonpoint is by no means Molly's weak point, A said,"
The House of Ulysses by Julián Ríos, translated by Nick Caistor, p 260
"The union in the here and now becomes hieroghamic on The Sweets of Sin, Professor Jones said, though the oghamic script is here substituted for by the simple and modified Irish characters..."
The House of Ulysses by Julián Ríos, translated by Nick Caistor, p 251
Comments by knitandpurl
Show previous 200 comments...
knitandpurl commented on the word peripety
The literal meaning of Peripecias del no is "Peripeties of No," but while the title works great in Spanish, in English, it is inkhorn.
Darren Koolman's Translator's Preface to The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni
September 12, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word pasquinade
"Set in an elementary school in Argentina in the early seventies, it is in fact a pasquinade on the bourgeois pretentions and puerile rivalries among Buenos Aires writers and intellectuals at that time."
Darren Koolman, in his Translator's Preface to The No Variations by Luis Chitarroni, p V of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 10, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word aedile
No such titan ever visited
during my days as aedile. Yet wisps
still buttonhole us in random moats:
- from "Gravy for the Prisoners" by John Ashbery, p 28 of the August 26, 2013 issue of the New Yorker
September 3, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word onager
"Video games have turned everyone under the age of 20 into experts on military history and tactics; 12-year-olds on school buses argue about the right way to deploy onagers and cataphracts while outflanking a Roman triplex acies formation."
"It's All Geek to Me" by Neal Stephenson, pp 60-61 of Some Remarks
September 2, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word wakizashi
"Of course the Carbonite stilettos pierced it as if it were cork board, but this spoiled his aim long enough for me to whip my wakizashi out from between my shoulder blades and swing at his head."
"Slashdot Interview" by Neal Stephenson, p 28 of Some Remarks
August 29, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word cancellate
"Scatter patterns in sand, adnates, cancellates, gaping
whelk husks, a toy tractor-trailer, cracked
and dinged, beside the spine of a plastic tree,
the helmet-shaped shelter of a shadow cast
by a not-quite-buried wedge of pottery . . ."
"Hermit Crab" by Stephen Burt, p 28 of the August 5, 2013 issue of the New Yorker
August 13, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word adnate
"Scatter patterns in sand, adnates, cancellates, gaping
whelk husks, a toy tractor-trailer, cracked
and dinged, beside the spine of a plastic tree,
the helmet-shaped shelter of a shadow cast
by a not-quite-buried wedge of pottery . . ."
"Hermit Crab" by Stephen Burt, p 28 of the August 5, 2013 issue of the New Yorker
August 13, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word leylandii
"She sent me out to check ten sycamores at the backs of some houses in Romsey to see whether there was a root problem when it came to the sewers (the sycamores were fine, though a leylandii clump was too close to the houses by far) and by the time I got back to work she'd sent me an email saying I'd been assigned next week off, on half-pay—in October, which is one of our busiest times."
Artful by Ali Smith, p 57
August 3, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word fent
"What is this picture but a fragment?
Is it linen—papyrus—who can say?
All those stains and fents and stretched bits, but
she was a character, even a beauty, you can see that
from the set of her head and the rakish snood
her tight black curls are fighting to escape from."
"The Sandal" by Edwin Morgan, quoted in Artful by Ali Smith, pp 25-26
August 2, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word fubsy
"You laugh out loud and tell me what Angela Carter said about that 'fubsy beast': she thought he looked more like a pajama case than a tiger. I go away and look up the word fubsy. I've never heard it before."
Artful by Ali Smith, p 16
August 2, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word palinode
"He hangs his distinctive coat on a peg and says, "I have found a wonderful subject for you: Stesichorus's palinode ..." Yes, I can still see Mr. Bailly very clearly."
Climates by André Maurois, translated by Adriana Hunter, p 11 of the Other Press paperback edition
July 23, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word steeplebush
"Steeplebush flourished by some other name, lost ow, long before there were steeples."
"Neon" by Carl Phillips, in Silverchest (p 24)
July 22, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word carking
"Set free from carking care and amply provided for, we were able to give most of our time and energy to our real profession – which, of course, is Sapping – and so moving northward and then westward we presently arrived, after a leisurely but eventful journey, much of it very comfortably underground, at the eastern border of Bombardy."
The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, p 335 of the New York Review of Books edition
July 19, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word carking
"Set free from carking care and amply provided for, we were able to give most of our time and energy to our real profession – which, of course, is Sapping – and so moving northward and then westward we presently arrived, after a leisurely but eventful journey, much of it very comfortably underground, at the eastern border of Bombardy."
The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, p 335 of the New York Review of Books edition
July 19, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word clock-golf
"The Judge, as it happened, was playing clock-golf with his Cook, and his two maids were watching, so there was some delay before the visitors were admitted."
The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, p 205 of the New York Review of Books hardcover
July 17, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word barratry
"Are you quite sure, Mrs. Wellaby, that you haven't committed even the least little tiny tort in the last few days? Because I am ready, now as ever, to defend you against any accusation whatsoever, no matter whether it be barratry or illicit diamond-buying, forgery or coining, breach of promise to marry, or armed resistance to capture."
The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, p 199 of the New York Review of Books hardcover
July 17, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word skilly
"'Because you're a stiff-necked, rascally, rebellious, unruly rout of predestined skilly-swillers,' he would yell."
The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, p 185 of the New York Review of Books hardcover
July 17, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word whipcord
"He wore a canvas jacket, whipcord breeches, and a bowler hat."
The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, p 75 of the New York Review of Books hardcover
July 17, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word pikelet
"For tea they had scones and pancakes, crumpets and pikelets, muffins and cream buns, plum cake and seed cake and cream cake and chocolate cake, and often some bread and butter as well."
The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, p 23 of the New York Review of Books hardcover
July 17, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word satinwood
"It was a pleasant room with a window facing south, a satinwood bed, a satinwood dressing-table, and a satinwood writing desk at which Miss Serendip used to sit and write letters to her seven sisters"
The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, p 19 of the New York Review of Books hardcover
July 17, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word crumhorn
"These rackets are strange: they look like "old rackets" (like violas to violins, crumhorns to bassoons); one of them has an extremely large wooden frame and the racket itself (the stringed part) is a tiny round (not oval) hole that is obviously stringless."
La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams by Georges Perec, translated by Daniel Levin Becker
July 8, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word etui
"On the second floor of the Opera atelier, Anna Maria sat at a dressing table with a small mirror, took a round etui from her pocket, extracted the reddened cotton wad, spit on it, and blotted her lips."
The Stockholm Octavo by Karen Engelmann, p 162
July 2, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word coryphée
"Miss Hagman had the perfect life: a luxurious apartment, more than adequate means, and she was free to be a coryphée, to socialize with all manner of people—from royalty to artists."
The Stockholm Octavo by Karen Engelmann, p 157
July 2, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word waldhorn
"It was Sunday, a popular night for balls and fetes, and I could hear the distant blast of a waldhorn signaling a bacchanal."
The Stockholm Octavo by Karen Engelmann, p 13
June 27, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word taenia
"From the Wikipedia entry for "thyrsus":
In Greek mythology, a staff of giant fennel (Ferula communis) covered with ivy vines and leaves, sometimes wound with taeniae and always topped with a pine cone."
- from The Magic Circle by Jenny Davidson, p 131
June 1, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word gharial
""I'll see a lion, a tiger, a jackal. I'll be attacked by a naja cobra, and a gharial. I'll rescue a child from the claws of a condor."
My Beautiful Bus by Jacques Jouet, translated by Eric Lamb, p 83
May 23, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word glasswort
"Then ask him if he wouldn't happen to have some glasswort, and if not than percebes, or goose barnacles, those little crustaceans like the ones you find in Galicia and the Madrilenian markets."
My Beautiful Bus by Jacques Jouet, translated by Eric Lamb, p 45
May 22, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word filibeg
"The remnants of a lacy filibeg clung to the twisted circlets of the Crimson crown, its garnets glinting dully, and the Punctilious Trousers bore unpleasant stains."
"The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 239 of Errantry: Strange Stories
May 1, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word urceolate
"Saloona observed an urceolate figure who held a jeroboam of frothing liquor."
"The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 239 of Errantry: Strange Stories
May 1, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word destrier
"She gestured at the waiting cabriolets and winged caravans, parked alongside the bridled destriers and sleeping gorgosaurs that lined the long curving drive."
"The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 236 of Errantry: Strange Stories
May 1, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word temulent
""The Crimson Court has a legendary kitchen. Too long have you languished here among your toadstools and toxic chanterells, Saloona Morn! At great danger to myself, I have secured you an invitation so that you may sample the Paeolinas' nettlefish froth and their fine baked viands, also a cellar known throughout the Metarin Mountains for vintages as rare as they are temulent. Still you remain skeptical of my motivations.""
"The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 225 of Errantry: Strange Stories
May 1, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word electuary
""You require the use of my prism ship and my fungal electuaries. I remain uncertain of the benefits to myself.""
"The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 225 of Errantry: Strange Stories
May 1, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word ustulate
""An ustulating spell directed at his paramour's bathing chamber. The squireen has been reduced to ash. The optimate's need to retain his affection has therefore diminished.""
"The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 223 of Errantry: Strange Stories
May 1, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word messuage
""The Queen was not aware of it either," replied Paytim. "Her brother poisoned her and seized control of the Crimson Messuage. He has impertinently invited me to attend his coronoation as Paeolina the Twenty-Ninth.""
"The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 221 of Errantry: Strange Stories
May 1, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word periapt
"Clans have fought and died over this periapt."
"The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 217 of Errantry: Strange Stories
May 1, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word athanor
"When the dishes were cleared and the last of the locust jelly spooned from a shared bowl, Paytim poured two jiggers of amber whiskey. She removed a pair of red-hot pokers from the kitchen athanor, plunged one into each jigger, then dropped the spent pokers into the sink."
"The Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 216 of Errantry: Strange Stories
May 1, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word hebetude
"Insensibility, melancholia, hebetude; ordinary mental tumult and more elaborate physical vexations (boils, a variety of thrip that caused the skin of an unfaithful lover to erupt in a spectacular rash, the color of violet mallows)—Saloona Morn cultivated these in her parterre in the shadow of Cobalt Mountain."
"Return of the Fire Witch" by Elizabeth Hand, p 209 of Errantry: Strange Stories
April 29, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word eidolon
"His former colleagues were now living eidolons of youth, beauty, health, joy, desire flitting past him in the studio, lovely and remote as figures from a medieval allegory."
- "The Far Shore" by Elizabeth Hand, p 130 of Errantry: Strange Stories
April 28, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word farthingale
"Its scales rose to form a stiff, brilliantly colored armor, a farthingale glimmering every shade of violet and green."
"Hungerford Bridge" by Elizabeth Hand: p 122 of Errantry: Strange Stories
April 28, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word irenic
"Today, I blame myself for my irenicism: I should never have allowed the issue of Les Temps modernes on the Arab–Israeli conflict to open with Rodinson's article, 'Israel, a Colonial Reality?', for I do not believe that this is, or has ever been, the case: in my films and in my writings, I have striven tirelessly to reveal the complex reality of Israel."
The Patagonian Hare by Claude Lanzmann, translated by Frank Wynne, p 399-400 of the Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover edition
April 19, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word septentrional
"To get from Beijing to Pyongyang, one went either by rail or by air: the first entailed a forty-eight-hour journey with a stop of indeterminate length at the Sino-Korean border before travelling north at a snail's pace through the septentrional regions of North Korea since there had recently been a catastrophic explosion that had destroyed a railway station and two trains, resulting in countless victims."
The Patagonian Hare by Claude Lanzmann, translated by Frank Wynne, p 315 of the Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover edition
April 18, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word maieutic
"I didn't feel qualified, but I accepted and we began to work, proceeding by a Socratic, maieutic method – which is something I'm rather good at."
The Patagonian Hare by Claude Lanzmann, p 191 of the Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover edition
April 16, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word apagogically
"It was over Duelo a garrotazos that I had apagogically envisaged rolling the opening credits for my film Tsahal, about the Israeli army and the wars it was compelled to fight."
The Patagonian Hare by Claude Lanzmann, translated by Frank Wynne, p 31 of the Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover edition
April 9, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word fricandeau
"Thus all they had to select from was tea, bread and sweet butter, porridge, ham and broiled mushrooms, rabbit pie, fricandeau of eggs, mayonnaise of prawns, and spiced beef."
Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger, p 121
March 11, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word plesiosynchronous
"Instead he listens, just in case Tom gets tripped up in the briar patch of plesiosynchronous protocol arcana, whence only Randy can drag him out."
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 406 of the Avon Books paperback edition
February 3, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word schistosomiasis
"Lord Woadmire is not related to the original line of Qwghlm, the Moore family (Anglicized from the Qwghlmian clan name Mnyhrrgh) which had been terminated in 1888 by a spectacularly improbable combination of schistosomiasis, suicide, long-festering Crimean war wounds, ball lightning, flawed cannon, falls from horses, improperly canned oysters, and rogue waves."
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 255 of the Avon Books paperback edition
January 30, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word gaffer
"Propped up against the stonework next to the building's entrance is a gaffer dressed in an antique variant of the Home Guard uniform, involving knickerbockers."
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 253 of the Avon Books paperback edition
January 30, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word muskellunge
"He swings it on the end of its wristband, made in cunningly joined armor plates. It is heavy enough to stun a muskellunge."
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 192 of the Avon Books paperback edition
January 28, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word mickle
"As a result, the authorities of his country, the United States of America, have made him swear a mickle oath of secrecy, and keep supplying him with new uniforms of various services and ranks, and now have sent him to London."
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 146 of the Avon Books paperback edition
January 28, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word pillbox
I didn't know the military meaning of this, as in:
"The Marines charge the wastebaskets as if they were Nip pillboxes, and Lieutenant Ethridge seems mollified."
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 189 of the Avon Books paperback edition
January 28, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word tuff
"Soon they are standing before the fort's entrance, which is flanked by carvings of a pair of guards cut into the foamy volcanic tuff: halberd-brandishing Spaniards in blousy pants and conquistador helmets."
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 121 of the Avon Books paperback edition
January 26, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word shooting-brake
"The United States part is, however, a safe bet, because every time he arrives at a curb, he either comes close to being run over by shooting-brake or he falters in his stride; diverts his train of thought onto a siding, much to the disturbance of its passengers and crew; and throws some large part of his mental calculation circuitry into the job of trying to reflect his surroundings through a large mirror. They drive on the left side of the street here."
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, pp 143-144 of the Avon Books paperback edition
January 26, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word swidden
"Farther south, the mountains are swidden-scarred—the soil beneath is bright red and so these parts look like fresh lacerations."
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 32 of the Avon Books paperback edition
January 22, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word punji
"The speed and power of their growth is alarming, the forms they adopt as bizarre and varied as those of deep-sea organisms, and all of them, he supposes, are as dangerous to an airplane as punji stakes to a barefoot pedestrian."
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 30 of the Avon Books paperback edition
January 22, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word duralumin
"The duralumin struts and catwalks rambled on above him for miles."
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 23 of the Avon Books paperback edition
January 21, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word quaternion
""Yes! Russell and Whitehead. It's like this: when mathematicians began fooling around with things like the square root of negative one, and quaternions, then they were no longer dealing with things that you could translate into sticks and bottlecaps. And yet they were still getting sound results."
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 18 of the Avon Books paperback edition
January 21, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word blockflöte
"For each stop—each timbre, or type of sound, that the organ could make (viz. blockflöte, trumpet, piccolo)—there was a separate row of pipes, arranged in a line from long to short."
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 8 of the Avon Books paperback edition
January 20, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word Lissajous
"But when a hornet got into the house and swung across the ceiling in a broad Lissajous, droning almost inaudibly, he cried in pain at the noise."
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, p 7 of the Avon paperback edition
January 20, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word swivet
"With only a few days to listen to the recordings, make notes, digest files from Time correspondents, read morgue clippings, and skim through several books, I was soon sprawled on the floor at home, surrounded by drifts of undifferentiated paper, and near tears in a catatonic swivet."
- "Structure" by John McPhee, p 46 of the January 14, 2013 issue of the New Yorker
January 15, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word corpse
I'd never heard this as a verb, I don't think! As in:
"Maureen emerged from behind the counter in her short black dress and frilly apron, and Shirley corpsed into her coffee."
The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling, p 351
January 10, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word Khalsa
"It was all very confusing, and she continued to enjoy Easter eggs and decorating the Christmas tree, and found the books that Parminder pressed upon her children, explaining the lives of the gurus and the tenets of Khalsa, extremely difficult to read."
The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling, p 301
January 10, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word yashmak
""And what about you?" Simon roared at his wife, who was still frozen beside the computer, her eyes wide behind her glasses, her hand clamped like a yashmak over her mouth."
The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling, p 283
January 10, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word grizzle
"Nobody came in answer to the bell, but she could hear a small child grizzling through the ground-floor window on her left, which was ajar."
The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling, p 66
January 10, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word cold pig
"I found I was a bit cold-pigged—drained, not dried entirely."
"Hello! Hi! Hello!" by Diane Williams, in Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty, p 111
January 1, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word throatlatch
"He carves horses and he paints a whole group on their points of hips, the throatlatches, on the tails, and so forth."
- "One of the Great Drawbacks" by Diane Williams, in Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty (p 75)
January 1, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word bixbite
"A woman who took orders there popped a lozenge the color of bixbite into her mouth."
- "Give Them Stuff" by Diane Williams, in Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty (p 55)
January 1, 2013
knitandpurl commented on the word porringer
""Can I see that?" he said, "What is that?"
It was a baby porringer."
"On the Job" by Diane Williams, in Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty, p 29
December 31, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word crepitation
"I crossed the street to survey the lake and I heard crepitations—three little girls bouncing their ball."
"My Defects" by Diane Williams, in Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty (p 13)
December 31, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word whilom
"Lawrence Lessig, the whilom Special Master in the Justice Department's antitrust suit against Microsoft, complained that he had installed Internet Explorer on his computer, and in so doing, lost all of his bookmarks--his personal list of signposts that he used to navigate through the maze of the Internet."
- "In the Beginning was the Command Line" by Neal Stephenson
December 24, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word paletot
"She was around fifty, garishly painted and dressed in the faded style of a older generation, in a worn silk paletot."
The Thing about Thugs by Tabish Khair, p 195
December 24, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word soucouyant
"As if the spectres with which he paid for his passage to England, the soucouyants with which he revenged his uncle and family, all those bloodthirsty ghosts of his narrative have come alive in this city."
The Thing about Thugs by Tabish Khair, p 191
December 24, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word agarbatti
"By now Amir has become used to the overbearing smells of London houses, especially around the kitchen: the odours, he feels, are stronger and more basic — burnt meat, boiled vegetables — than in respectable houses in his village, which are open to the cleansing air, purified by agarbattis."
The Thing about Thugs by Tabish Khair, p 105
December 23, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word peepal
"The matter was brought before the village panchayat, which had assembled, as was the custom, under the peepal tree in the village square."
The Thing about Thugs by Tabish Khair, p 49
December 19, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word peepal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ficus_religiosa
December 19, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word munshi
"Little good it did him though, this facing of a new future, the diligence with which he, in his youth, worked as a munshi before the death of his father called him back to the land, and the way in which he set himself to learn the customs and language of the Firangs."
The Thing about Thugs by Tabish Khair, pp 25-26
December 19, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word kabaddi
"I had always admired Hamid Bhai's ability to guess where the cut kite would alight, just as I admired his capacity to hold his breath for so long during our games of kabbadi."
The Thing about Thugs by Tabish Khair, p 24
December 19, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word concinnity
"Sign language has its own syntax patterns, dialects and accents (American Southerners are known for "blurry" signing), and even usage experts, who teach native signers to use the language with concinnity."
"Little Strangers" by Nathan Heller, p 89 of the November 19, 2012 issue of the New Yorker
November 29, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word tragacanth
"Composed of Paste and glued with Tragacanth, the Theme of this Device was an heroic Feat known as 'Callock's Leap'."
John Saturnall's Feast by Lawrence Norfolk, p 391
November 10, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word hanaper
"From his command post in the doorway of the Great Hall, Mister Pouncey pondered lists of secretaries and seal-keepers, council clerks and sergeants-at-arms. Was the Clerk of Petty Bag senior to a gentleman groom? he wondered. How important was the Keeper of the Hanaper, or the Chafe Wax?"
John Saturnall's Feast by Lawrence Norfolk, p 214
November 10, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word bigaroon
See citation on mazzard.
November 10, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word mazzard
"Gooseberries and raspberries came from Motte's fruit cages. Mazzards and bigaroons followed."
John Saturnall's Feast by Lawrence Norfolk, p 183
November 10, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word silphium
"Beyond it lay overgrown beds and plants John had never set eyes on before: tall resinous fronds, prickly shrubs, long grey-green leaves hot to the tongue. Nestling among them he found the root whose scent drifted among the trees like a ghost, sweet and tarry. He knelt and pressed it to his nose.
' That was called silphium.' His mother stood behind him. 'It grew in Saturnus's first garden.'"
John Saturnall's Feast by Lawrence Norfolk, p 88
November 10, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word alexander
See citation on skirret - in the "cow parsnip" sense.
November 10, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word skirret
"Familiar smells drifted in the air: fennel, skirrets and alexanders, then wild garlic, radishes and broom."
John Saturnall's Feast by Lawrence Norfolk, p 85
November 10, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word fescue
"John and his mother swished through carpets of vetches and fescues or pushed their way through the bushes, splashing through springs that broke through the turf and flowed through the grass in secret cascades."
John Saturnall's Feast by Lawrence Norfolk, p 42
November 10, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word soteriological
'I didn't exist at Creation,
I didn't exist at the Flood,
And I won't be around for Salvation
To sort out the sheep from the cud-
'Or whatever the phrase is. The fact is
In soteriological terms
I'm a crude existential malpractice
And you are a diet of worms.
- from "God, A Poem" by James Fenton
November 6, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word nous
"The Canavans—they had for decades and centuries brought to the Ox elements that were by turn complicated and simple: occult nous and racy semen."
"Ox Mountain Death Song" by Kevin Barry, in the October 29 & November 5, 2012 issue of the New Yorker, p 106
November 1, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word googly
"Unsurprisingly, the audiences got longer and more ragged, with a growing number of her loving subjects going away regretting that they had not performed well and feeling, too, that the monarch had somehow bowled them a googly."
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, p 41 of the FSG hardcover edition
October 13, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word boulle
"He took the books up to the Queen's floor and, having been told to make himself as scarce as possible, when the duke came by hid behind a boulle cabinet."
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, p 16 of the FSG hardcover edition
October 13, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word equerry
"'Not dolly enough,' said the equerry, though to the private secretary not to the Queen. "
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, p 15 of the FSG hardcover edition
October 13, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word tartar
The "a person of a keen, irritable temper" definition of this one is new to me. As in (re: Cecil Beaton):
"'No, of course not. You'd be too young. He always used to be round here, snapping away. And a bit of a tartar. Stand here, stand there. Snap, snap. And there's a book about him now?"
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, p 7 of the FSG hardcover edition
October 13, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word glabrous
"Unbriefed on the subject of the glabrous playwright and novelist, the president looked wildly about for his minister of culture."
The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, p 4 of the FSG hardcover edition
October 13, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word kaolin
"My work required careful research (as patient as Gutenberg taking his time making an ink that was neither too fluid nor not fluid enough) to find a discrete way to starch the lips of these slits. I used kaolin."
Savage by Jacques Jouet, translated by Amber Shields, p 58 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback edition
October 13, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word fleuron
"She who knew neither past nor future, who had neither a tomorrow nor memories, had been obliged without warning to come here, to follow this grand deviation of the arrow of time—the most beautiful fleuron of occidental decadence."
- Savage by Jacques Jouet, translated by Amber Shields, p 36 of the Dalkey Archive paperback edition
October 12, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word duppy
"Don't know about duppies, Keisha. Don't want to know about them."
NW by Zadie Smith
October 7, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word sleb
"Now everyone came to brunch with their "quality" paper and a side order of trash. Tits and vicars and slebs and murder."
NW by Zadie Smith, p 299
October 7, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word kolkhoz
""Exactly," says Paloma triumphantly, "there is not enough regulation. Too many rail workers, not enough plumbers. Personally, I would prefer the kolkhoz.""
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, translated by Alison Anderson, p 281 of the Europa Editions paperback
September 28, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word asthenic
"I limit myself therefore to a refrain of asthenic yeses in response to Jacinthe Rosen's hysterical salves."
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, translated by Alison Anderson, p 133 of the Europa Editions paperback
September 28, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word pithiatic
"At the moment he is enduring Jacinthe Rosen's pithiatic prattling. She brings to mind a hen at the foot of a mountain of grain."
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, translated by Alison Anderson, p 133 of the Europa Editions paperback
September 28, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word conatus
"Thus we use up a considerable amount of our energy in intimidation and seduction, and these two strategies alone ensure the quest for territory, hierarchy and sex that gives life to our conatus."
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, translated by Alison Anderson, p 97 of the Europa Editions paperback
September 28, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word noematic
"Had I but the leisure to bite into the standard meter, I would slap myself noisily on the thighs while reading, and such delightful chapters as "Uncovering the final sense of science by becoming immersed in science qua noematic phenomenon" or "The problems constituting the transcendental ego" might even cause me to die of laughter, a blow straight to the heart as I sit slumped in my plush armchair, with plum juice or thin driblets of chocolate oozing from the corners of my mouth..."
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, translated by Alison Anderson, p 58 of the Europa Editions paperback
September 28, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word fucus
"It looks like an enormous shell, fucus growing all over it, straight out of The Water Babies."
The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard, p 91 of the 50th anniversary edition
September 3, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word bocage
"As the noise of the helicopter's engine faded out on the roof above them, Riggs and Macready bent down and inspected the crude catamaran hidden behind a screen of bocage under the balcony."
The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard, p 73 of the 50th anniversary edition
September 3, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word distal
"Descending to three hundred feet above the water, they began to rake up and down the distal five-mile length of the main channel."
The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard, p 72 of the 50th anniversary edition
September 3, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word punka
"She noticed Riggs peering over his shoulder at the bar. 'What's the matter, Colonel? Looking for your punka-wallah? I'm not going to get you a drink, if that's what you're after. I think you men only come up here to booze.'"
The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard, p 39 of the 50th anniversary edition
September 3, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word gauleiter
"Kerans shrugged, smiling at her amiably. 'I missed you.'
'Good boy. I thought perhaps that the gauleiter here had been trying to frighten you with his horror stories.'"
The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard, p 37 of the 50th anniversary edition
September 3, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word valonia
"A specially commissioned report, commending 'the alluvial nature of the soil', listed the valley's crops 'of all kinds from the rarest to the coarsest qualities. Tobacco, the fig, the vine, the olive, the poppy, the cotton plant and mulberry tree are all indigenous products, whilst maize, barley, beans, flax, hemp and a variety of pulse and oleaginous seeds are raised in large quantities. Valonia, yellow-berries, wool, goats' hair, dyestuffs, drugs, skins, honey, wax and likewise abound.' The only hindrance was the primitive condition of the region's Ottoman infrastructure; by revolutionising the pre-industrial carriage of the valley's largely perishable produce, the railway company's backers meant to make a killing."
Meander: East to West, Indirectly, Along a Turkish River by Jeremy Seal, p 270 of the Bloomsbury USA hardcover edition
September 1, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word bowser
"The village was empty. The flank of a sleeping dog heaved in the shade of a blue water bowser."
Meander: From East to West, Indirectly, Along a Turkish River by Jeremy Seal, p 164 of the Bloomsbury USA hardcover edition
August 28, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word leat
"I was curious about the watermills. The locals spoke of these mills as they might have referred to old mine workings or to the quicksands of tidal flats, to ice-covered ponds or the craters of rumbling volcanoes; I sensed it might pay this visiting canoeist to understand the local view if only because watermills meant no more to me than innocuous echoes of a pre-industrial past, a stock feature of picturesque period landscapes, high wheels turning harmlessly within the barred confines of their leats."
Meander: From East to West, Indirectly, Along a Turkish River by Jeremy Seal, p 135 of the Bloomsbury USA hardcover edition
August 28, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word shiplap
"By the time she returned with my breakfast — a tight-waisted glass of black tea, bread. crumbly white cheese, ship-lapped slices of tomato and cucumber, honey, and a boiled egg — and with more parsley for her husband, I was deep in the lead stories."
Meander: East to West, Indirectly, Along a Turkish River by Jeremy Seal, p 21 of the Bloomsbury USA hardcover edition
August 25, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word prosectorial
"Dr. Tulp will soon be here
in his black hat, prosectorial
instruments in hand"
- from "A Waltz Dream" by W.G. Sebald, translated by Iain Galbraith, in Across the Land and the Water - p 97 of the Random House hardcover
August 18, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word marram
"When the monster didn't
show the marram
was permitted to reoccupy
the fortified strip"
- from "Holkham Gap" by W.G. Sebald, translated by Iain Galbraith, in Across the Land and the Water - p 68 of the Random House hardcover
August 15, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word tussore
"Mr Thwaite often attended the Sports Days, and Maitland came, too, dressed in brown tussore and a picture hat and carrying a reticule."
Crusoe's Daughter by Jane Gardam, p 233 of the Europa Editions paperback
August 12, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word powsowdy
"'Now just go through to the dairy,' said Paul Treece's mother, 'and on the stone you'll see pork sausages. We'll fry them for the chicken on the fire. The bread sauce is at the bottom of the oven and there'll be room. The plum pudding's well away. There's room for another pan. It's a fine pow-sowdy. I'se not my usual self this year. Most-times I'se brisker. Maybe it's soon to be bothering with Christmas, but Paul wouldn't have wanted us overcome.'"
Crusoe's Daughter by Jane Gardam, p 178 of the Europa Editions paperback
August 12, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word calquing
"And yet, as though to punish me now for calquing my own images over these sidewalks long ago, Via Clelia was giving them all back—but not a thing more."
Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere by André Aciman, p 30 of the FSG hardcover
July 18, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word remanence
"The wishfilm we leave on our walks glistens on the city's hard surfaces like the luminous imprint of fish scales left on a butcher's block hours after the fish was caught, cut, and cooked—outside of time. It still glistens, still pulsates, reaching out to strangers, calling out to them, sometimes long after we're gone. The remanence of our presence, our lingering afterimage on this city—the best of us."
Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere by André Aciman, p 155 of the FSG hardcover
July 18, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word pifferaro
"Biffy was a man of principle. He refused, on principle, to sell a huge tricolored pifferaro bonnet decorated with a cascade of clove pinks, black currants, and cut jet beads to Mrs. Colindrikal-Bumbcruncher for her daughter."
Timeless by Gail Carriger, p 18
July 11, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word dahabiya
"He spoke in a hushed voice. "I traced Madame Lefoux to the dahabiya docks. A peculiar sort of place. Lost the scent there. I'm afraid she may have boarded a ship. ...""
Timeless by Gail Carriger, p 278
July 11, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word pifferaro
Also a style of hat in the late 1870s: per the Berg Dictionary of Fashion History it's a "hat with a short, chimney-pot crown trimmed with an aigrette in front."
July 10, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word faena
"The ox was sleek, black, muscular; when it plodded into the spotlight, under the guidance of a wrangler, the stage crew and other rehearsing performers shifted tensely, as if each motion might mark the start of a faena."
- "Listen and Learn" by Nathan Heller, in The New Yorker, July 9 & 16, 2012, p 69
July 8, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word lek
"Men show off; women pretend to be impressed—the eternal circle of the selective lek."
Winter by Adam Gopnik, p 147 of the House of Anansi paperback edition
June 23, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word lairy
"Where, we wonder, are the people of Nashville? That's one thing we like about our cities, we agree: there are always people about. They're usually drunk, of course. Drunk and lairy. But that is a good sign."
Dogma by Lars Iyer, p 20
June 9, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word copula
"Capitalism and religion, W. says. Or, in my case, failed capitalism and failed religion. Somehow, I'm the key to his project, W. says. Somehow I'm the key to the copula, though he's not sure how."
Dogma by Lars Iyer, p 12
June 8, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word fusee
"I was there close by him, by the four of them as they assembled the fusee chain, or four fusee chains."
The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey, p 141 of the Knopf hardcover edition
June 6, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word charlock
"The white charlock, which was obviously as much of a pest in Furtwangen as its yellow brother in Low Hall, touched the morbid scene with falsely cheerful light.'
The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey, p 94 of the Knopf hardcover edition
June 5, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word monocoque
"Did you know when applying to register a rebuilt Mini one must declare whether one's fucking chassis or monocoque body has been replaced or modified in any way?"
The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey, p 85 of the Knopf hardcover edition
June 5, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word collet
"Before the glass cleaning began I would have to remove the brass collet at the end of each rod. The collet would fit into some as yet unseen mechanism which would rotate the rods."
The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey, p 78 of the Knopf hardcover
June 5, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word skerrick
"Finally they retired and when Sumper left the field, I scraped his plate, the last skerrick of cheese sauce as well."
The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey, p 65 of the Knopf hardcover edition
June 5, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word voe
"still pointed westward
down the long voe,
down toward the ocean
where the business is."
- from "The Overhaul" by Kathleen Jamie, p 60 of the May 28, 2012 edition of the New Yorker
May 30, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word totalisator
"Then, perhaps two months later, when I had stepped, as I often did, into the totalisator agency in a suburb adjoining my own suburb, I saw the monk in a far corner, reading one of the form-guides on the wall."
Barley Patch by Gerald Murnane, p 238 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
May 26, 2012
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 22, 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 9, 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
April 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
April 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
April 18, 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
April 18, 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
April 12, 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
April 12, 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.)
April 8, 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
April 8, 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
April 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.
April 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
March 30, 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
March 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
March 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
March 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
March 13, 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
March 12, 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
March 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
February 28, 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
February 28, 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
February 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
February 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."
February 27, 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
February 27, 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
February 27, 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
February 27, 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
February 27, 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
February 27, 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
February 26, 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
February 26, 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
February 25, 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
February 24, 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
February 24, 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
February 21, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word spaldeen
Wikipedia says a spaldeen is a Spalding Hi-Bounce ball: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaldeen
February 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
February 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
February 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
February 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
February 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
February 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
February 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
February 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
February 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
February 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
February 5, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word poignard
"Beyond the standard Christian iconography, crucifixion and pietà, is a stumpy-legged man in a cowl, brandishing a chisel or poignard."
London Orbital by Iain Sinclair, p 231 of the Penguin paperback edition
February 2, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word synclinal
"The canal is an interloper in what was once a landscape of private parks, perched on a synclinal basin of chalk strata."
London Orbital by Iain Sinclair, p 182 of the Penguin paperback edition
January 31, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word ceanothus
"Blues and purples and mauves. Lavender and ceanothus. The drench of suburbia."
London Orbital by Iain Sinclair, p 136 of the Penguin paperback edition
January 29, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word villein
"A solid ancient leaning on his hoe, shuffling backwards and forwards to his shed. The villein with his small corner of England."
London Orbital by Iain Sinclair, p 135 of the Penguin paperback edition
January 29, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word chorography
"There was, at one level, a real, blistery narrative to these walks; chorographic mappings attendant on the soar, the flash of revelation."
London Orbital by Iain Sinclair, p 122 of the Penguin paperback edition
January 29, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word greensand
"The London Loop by David Sharp continued the process of opening up the suburbs, linking patches of woodland, riverside paths, tracks across chalk and greensand."
London Orbital by Iain Sinclair, p 83 of the Penguin paperback edition
January 26, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word dunnock
"As we strolled alongside the Marshes, the reservoir embankments, he pointed out grey wagtail, dunnock."
London Orbital by Iain Sinclair, p 57 of the Penguin paperback edition
January 26, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word monkjack
Apparently the same as muntjac.
January 25, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word monkjack
"Thick woods, screening the concrete bunkers and hunchbacked huts from the eyes of the curious, will provide an excellent habitat for shy fauna, for monkjacks."
London Orbital by Iain Sinclair, p 39 of the Penguin paperback edition
January 25, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word nurdle
"Driving on the M25, coming over the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, fumbling for your coin to pay the road toll, nurdling into the right lane, brings out the stories."
London Orbital by Iain Sinclair, p 13 of the Penguin paperback edition
January 22, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word avadavat
I thought I'd first seen this word just now, but it was already on my 'looked up' list so I must've seen it before. Well, here's where I most recently encountered it:
"I'd draw every known bird in the world. Avadavat, turtle dove, chaffinch, bullfinch. It would be something to do and it would take care of time and give me some pleasure."
Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch, p 287 of the Doubleday hardcover edition
January 13, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word goney
"We all leaned forward to hear.
"A bird," I said. "A cloud. A goney or a cormorant."
He said it was an eye with wings."
Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch, p 111 of the Doubleday hardcover edition
January 11, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word gally
"He had a way of calling a whisper, loud enough for us all to hear, but not loud enough to gally the whales."
Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch, p 96 of the Doubleday hardcover
January 11, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word gam
I like that this word is both "a school of whales" and "a visit between whalers."
The latter:
"We met another ship, the Gallopan out of New Bedford, and so embarked upon a gam—a meeting of ships, a bit of fun—and that was my first and best gam, and went on for three or four days till I began to think that we were out here on this ocean for no other reason than to drink rum, eat Wilson Pride's salty pork dumplings and play cards of an evening."
Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch, p 91 of the Doubleday hardcover edition
January 11, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word tryworks
"That first supper on deck, all of us from fo'c's'le sitting next to the tryworks round a huge lump of salt pork that sat like a rock upon a tub they called the kid."
Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch, p 72 of the Doubleday hardcover edition
January 11, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word lighterman
"Early in the morning, a straggle of dockers and lightermen on the quay, a bunch of old women and a few mothers, not mine."
Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch, p 66 of the Doubleday hardcover edition
January 10, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word bethel
"By the time I was eleven I could read and write. Mr. Jamrach said he needed his boys to be able to write things down and read off lists. I was quick. Ma was impressed. "You clever boy, Jaf," she said when I read the posters plastered outside the seamen's bethel."
Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch, p 40 of the Doubleday hardcover edition
January 9, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word fly-half
""May I welcome you. This is my associate, Mr. Arbuthnot—very promising young gentleman from Cambridge, don't you know—fly-half—terrific hunter."
A Burial at Sea by Charles Finch, p 259
January 5, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word cathead
"In that case proceed to the cathead at the fore of the ship, as per tradition, and keep an eye on Mr. Tart."
A Burial at Sea by Charles Finch, p 149
January 5, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word acockbill
"Martin himself supervised them, and also ordered the sails set in counterpoise to each other, so that the ship would be as perfectly still as possible. Then he called out, "Top gallant yards, acock bill," an order that sent men scurrying up the rigging."
A Burial at Sea by Charles Finch, p 95
January 4, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word orlop
"The Lucy left Plymouth Harbor under steam (somewhere below deck—Lenox suspected it was in the orlop, but couldn't feel sure—men were shoveling coal as if their lives depended on it) about an hour later."
A Burial at Sea by Charles Finch, p 33
January 3, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word bouleversement
"We had thought these bouleversements might cease, but the deaths of our men…this is where we need you to step in."
A Burial at Sea by Charles Finch, p 23
January 2, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word marula
"Some trees provided fruit: tamarind, marula, raisinier, custard apple."
- "The Great Oasis" by Burkhard Bilger, p 120 of the December 19 & 26, 2011 issue of the New Yorker
January 1, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word harmattan
"The noonday sun could send temperatures soaring to a hundred and fifteen degrees and a hot harmattan wind blew down from the desert."
- "The Great Oasis" by Burkhard Bilger, p 116 of the December 19 & 26, 2011 issue of the New Yorker
January 1, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word ruderal
"Rafinesque perfected his variant of this honorable philosophy while botanizing in the literal backyards of my childhood, examining ruderal plants I've known all my life, and so I have appropriated it from him, with minor tweaks."
John Jeremiah Sullivan, quoted in "Reality Effects" by James Wood, p 136 of the December 19 & 26, 2011 issue of The New Yorker
January 1, 2012
knitandpurl commented on the word brise-soleil
"Failing to be uplifted by white columns or the vertical thrust of the hall's backbone, he dwelled instead on how the opening of the brise-soleil, the structure above the building so reminiscent of a whale's tail just before a long submersion, left those inside both exposed—and trapped."
Sleight by Kirsten Kaschock, p 59
December 24, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word sefirot
"In the middle of the final series—1st sefirot, fortress, sacri-fly, infold, purl, 2nd sefirot, j-ladder (5) —Clef felt the alien tug.
(5) Recent additions to sleight vocabulary have come from varied disciplines. Hands have reenvisioned structures from molecular biology, Kabbalah, psychoanalysis, physics, Vodou, baseball, astronomy, rock art, the I Ching, chemistry, and knitting."
Sleight by Kirsten Kaschock, p 30
December 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word negus
"There was no reply to his question, however, and he went back to reading, occasionally pausing to sip the hot negus that had gone lukewarm as he worked."
The Fleet Street Murders by Charles Finch, p 3
December 13, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word subfusc
"Many of them were wearing the undergraduate subfusc, in various states of dishevelment."
The September Society by Charles Finch, p 31
December 11, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word beak
I didn't know the sense of "schoolmaster" 'til now.
As in: "At his school, Harrow, one of the beaks from his house, Druries (where Lord Byron had been, not to mention Lord Palmerston, who had died only a year before), had noticed Lenox's height and asked him to come row for the house team."
The September Society by Charles Finch, p 14
December 11, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word apotropaic
"A forty-dollar tangerine of nutmeat
ribboned by slender Greek
fingers of lovers so charmed
his coiffed stubble matched her armpit hairs
was handed to me, apotropaically,"
from "Epicurean" by Danielle Chapman, in the New Yorker, p 97 of the November 21, 2011 issue
December 8, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word mort
"'It's a mort o' snow,' he said, somehow making it official. 'A mighty mort o' snow.'"
I Am Half-Sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley, p 130
November 26, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word quod
"'But the old woman — Lady Gawd 'elp us — 'as put 'er old man in quod.'"
Poet's Pub by Eric Linklater, p 299 of the Orkney Edition hardcover
November 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word fritinancy
"'The native thought of mankind is gratitude. The most significant noise of earth is the singing of birds,' said the professor with determination.
'Fritinancy,' declared the young man beside the fire.
'What's that?' said the professor.
'I said fritinancy. which is the whimper of gnats and the buzzing of flies. You're talking nonsense.'"
Poet's Pub by Eric Linklater, pp 281-282 of the Orkney Edition hardcover
November 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word anastomose
"But age comes quickest and most irremediable to mechanical things. The life of a sparking-plug is a fierce tropical existence of days only. No healing leucocytes rush to the aid of a cracked cylinder, nor anastomosing tributaries expand to carry the life-blood of a choked feed-pipe."
Poet's Pub by Eric Linklater, pp 279-280 of the Orkney Edition hardcover
November 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word corposant
"Saturday poked them with his fingers, and as he did so, a line or two shone brightly in the quick fire. 'The corposants burnt blue on every mast,' he read."
Poet's Pub by Eric Linklater, p 129 of the Orkney Edition hardcover
November 24, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word niblick
"Joan Benbow, driving ambitiously, had watched her ball land, leap forward in a series of diminishing arcs, and come to rest in Hibbett's Hole. (Hibbett was a Victorian golfer, one of John Company's colonels, who died in harness, his enlarged spleen bursting almost simultaneously with a good niblick in the bunker now called after him.)"
Poet's Pub by Eric Linklater, p 94 of the Orkney Edition hardcover
November 24, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word strout
"They might be charming fellows, of course. Great, noisy children, now laughing full-heartedly, now piteously seeking comfort and dimly knowing in their wise Slave hearts—were they Slavs?—that no one on earth could comfort them. Children of the steppes who would never grow up. But they grew beards, damn them. Great strouting bristle-patches of beards."
Poet's Pub by Eric Linklater, p 55 of the Orkney Edition hardcover
November 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word kibe
"Fool: If a man's brains were in's heels, were't not in danger of kibes?
Lear: Ay, boy."
- Shakespeare, quoted as epitaph to Poet's Pub by Eric Linklater
November 21, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word iridology
"A lifelong sufferer from psychosomatic illnesses, he was also an enthusiastic supporter of homeopathy, iridology and vegetarianism, as well as professing an interest in astrology and dream interpretation."
Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight by James Attlee, p 250
November 20, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word gamboge
"The lessons begin with exhaustive lists of colours — Gamboge, Indian Yellow, Cadmium Yellow, Raw Umber, Yellow Ochre — with notes on combining them and colour wheels to show how they relate to one another."
Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight by James Attlee, p 62
November 15, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word wyvern
"The suspended creatures turn their heads in the direction of the ghost in their midst. Gryphons and foxes and wyverns stare at him with glossy black eyes."
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, p 117
October 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word acer
"When I look up, I see a faint wash of pale green across the poplars and the blue crocuses make fairy rings round the base of the acer trees."
Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill, p 80 of the Profile Books paperback
October 17, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word prebendary
"I turn over twice, bed of embers, taken in by risk, violated by the speed of this century that has turned the heads of so many ardent worshipers of the State, God of Modern Times, on a quest for progress; Italy lulled by fascination for manufacture, signing pacts with flash-in-the-pan figures who ransacked their revolutionary period: sucked into the trajectory of bolstering the State and corrupting it in the process, creativity abandoned in sinecure and prebendary to set off in discovery of the proletarian era, with its canned announcements, lunar conquests, poetically inspired factories, how far we have drifted from that initial project that with millions in voice and deed made the country tremble, now returning to dissidence: Malevich, Mayakovsky, whose images and words capture oblivion, injecting us, in proletarian zeal, with the elixir that will purge us of our mystical vanity."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 237 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
October 2, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word kashf
"Those who can read shall read, and leave commentary to the others. To the first, joy is limited to reading, deciphering the sign; for the others the satisfaction and nourishment of their intelligence is achieved beyond: by interpretation, by unveiling, kashf."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 231 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
October 2, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word acroterion
See citation on mafraj.
October 2, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word mafraj
"Like the time in San'ā, at the close of an evening of qāt, relaxing mafraj brightened by polychrome windows, leaving at dawn, garden, circular openings, rings and acroteria, lacy cornices, walking to Hammam al-Maydān, dome and cistern, spray of water falling into concentric traces of itself, pool receiving reflection of sunbeam."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 215 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
October 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word apodyterium
"Apodyterium where women and adolescent girls shine, beauty assured, prey ravished the previous night from beyond the medina's boundary, in the new quarter, Rue de Serbie between the central market and the train station, behind the French Embassy, hair salon for well-born ladies, mistresses, and high society insiders, antechamber of the State, orgiastic pleasure palace, sex without despair, consume now, pay later, hairdresser as madam, inventing new couplings then undoing them, cashing in, or not, on the goodwill of bodies, we merge into sex for sale, soft bed for softer breasts, finding mother in woman, ignoring her fervor, offering ourselves up as products of exchange: generosity that reifies what little remains of the body, experimenting with the self as other; backsliding patriarchs, recalcitrant Messalinas: get back to the vengeful Bedouin Eros, squall that leaves nothing behind but a body now neutralized; women, split from your new alliances, surrender yourselves as demons even more debased than your city-dwelling sisters, take on the roving eye and daring of men: woman is an other."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 213 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
October 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word adab
"Your family name, however, is another matter: originally Mu'addib, schoolmaster, teacher, prescriber of knowledge for its proper usage in society, dispenser of adab, a purveyor by name of good breeding and official culture, for the training of scribes and other executives of Arab power."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 207 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
October 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word aetites
"May I suggest some samples of my remedies: I can tell you that sage loosens the tongue, kindles affection; and that hollowed-out aetites stones, when shaken like rattles, then placed on a woman in labor, will make for a quick delivery; likewise, rose of Jericho, macerated and then taken in liquid form, can also ease delivery for those of you ladies looking to bear children; donkey and horse hooves will likewise make birthing far less arduous, without exhaustion or excessive strain."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 199 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
October 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word mashrabiya
"Labyrinth that lightens the oppressiveness squeezing the house's heart, that bruised organ; in the back, a trellis guides a tree, split Y-shaped to climb skyward on either side of a mashrabiya, stark monument."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 196 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
October 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word francolin
"As for the male storytellers, let them learn a new trade, says Bakhta, chewing on the roasted thigh of a francolin hunted by our commandos around Tburba."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 186 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
October 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word kerria
"Here writing the text in Paris, swapping the anxiety of a vegetative state—progressing extravagantly—for kerria bouquets of text, great golden bunches naming the self, intermingled discipline of questioning, perfected into something other than a string of exiles, banishment, migration: rather, living in search of an excuse to sail off and prosper as a merchant in Ecuador, for example, fleeing one's own haunted existence, stating lopsidedly once again the struggle against the impossible, happy not to own up to oneself, namely, a destiny of dullness."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 175 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
October 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word entasis
"Fātima steps over those motionless bodies caught up in what they're protesting; following in Fātima's footsteps, I enter the high-ceilinged room, airy and light, slender columns, exaggerated by entasis, shaft topped by a capital, a typically Tunisoise interpretation of composite order, the capital itself topped by a tall impost."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 173 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
October 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word calotte
"This Ba'adiyīn cupola, petals brightly salient on the calotte, a play of walls and openings, image of seashell and grape leaf, gathering their compartments into a central stem ending in the cupola faced with volutes, plaster worked into floral patterns, itself receptacle of figures, broken lines, curves and inter-curves, arabesque of line projected into space, perfect Almoravid accomplishment based upon the transposition of the principles of Islamic decoration, flora and planar geometry, to an architecture lending volume to flat motifs, rutilant container, a balance of breaches cleverly circulating blue sky: what uncertain solitude, what southerliness made possible this achievement by interpretation of register, audacity of one who emerges from the desert to impose the notion of unification, to attain an ideal to be formulated centuries later by a Borromini, a Guarini, to celebrate by monument the feast of Catholic power, triumphant propagator of faith after overcoming its schismatic trauma?"
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 160-161 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 30, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word fatiha
"Fez shines with a light unattainable elsewhere. Some of its gatherings are truly worthy of admiration; I'll say nothing of the sacred intensity of the patron saint's mausoleum where votive offerings pile up, Moulay Driss, fātiha of the perverse, nor will I go on about the ironwork, paintings, the delicacy of its architectures, medersas and mosques more so than its palaces; and its artisans, manual or mental, certainly do take one to a higher plane: that weaver who took you in and spoke in inflammatory terms, that other host who took up residence in Fez after unraveling many of the mysteries and ambiguities hidden in the landscape that it occupies: think of the Swiss convert who pursued the tradition of certain nineteenth-century English alchemists, and who came to live in Fez, peace and quiet for anyone who believes in the possibility of social noninterference and the marginality to revive, through the body and the city, a tradition that has elsewhere disappeared."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 156-157 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 30, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word corniche
"This street attracts dust, but I wouldn't trade it for the corniche road that makes the Nile unreal, flaming like some fake sunset. They built it a few years back: ever since Russians started arriving by the thousands to build the dam, the city has completely changed."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 140 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 26, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word theriac
"Spectacle of vengeance and loathing, I remember my youth and the hilqa tradition, circular gatherings at Rahbat al-Ghanam, the eating of a live scorpion, treacherously struggling between the swallower's teeth: I don't deserve the sting you've inflicted, he shouts! Secure in his rights and in his organism's immunity thanks to vast experience with venomous stings and bites, deadly to the uninitiated, he raged and bit down on the creature, hideous cracking, attenuated by the highly active theriac, an ancestral potion in use among those who fraternize with venom-dispensing reptiles: solidarity, philter of perils, syrup mixed with blood such that the body adapts unharmed to more lethal toxins."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 134 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 26, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word bister
"The bard's voice slows down and, after the unfathomable and contradictory flow of words, grows vindictive, blaming all the opposing currents that crisscross the hall, sound like light filtering through in equal measure, music of the heavens where each beam by its sound fools the ear or lulls it into sleep: various shafts of light play upon the exalted heads, upon the symbols of each guild in bright, primary colors, a dominant green, deep as inexpressible blue, a quiver running through the branches of a century-old cedar; red, of neither fire nor blood, the deep shade of habit, restful to the eye; white encircling waves, desert effluvia; black, to obscure the names on tombs by night at the unheralded hour of sanctification that weight upon shoulders, burnūs of lemony wool with a fringe curiously embroidered with bister bees, with glitter-tipped emeralds."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 126 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word tarab
"Outside, musicians, placard carriers, and guildsmen are jostling, intense crowd of a thousand hues, discrete voices intoning improvisations, each flowing autonomous, an effortless tarab, barely contained joy."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 124 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word tarab
tarab.ie says ""Tarab" (in Arabic) is a state of ecstasy and surrender one enters while listening, with body and soul, to music."
September 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word barzakh
""The Bride of the Book," a sūra that used to intrigue me because of its mysterious double sonority, its indefinitely repeated doubling, all in the name of the twofold, sun, star, moon, Orient, Occident, tree, seed, scale, weight: two of each kind, two seas divided by that which separates, barzakh, isthmus, two lands, twice Eden and two others beyond, two springs, ruby and pearl: and to coral I wanted to add carnelian."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 107 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word iwan
"See the towering height of the Sultan Hassan mosque: there, the walls soar higher than cathedrals, shrinking the view of the sky captured by the confines of its courtyard, as defined by its four iwān: patch of blue so moving, unleashing the sobs so avidly yearned for, liberating the body."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 104 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word natron
"But what a mistake to have assembled limbs from fresh corpses to marinate in formaldehyde; you should have let them all macerate in a natron solution."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 92 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word bottarga
"Have some bottarga, it's good for you, makes you strong."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 92 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word boukha
"Chickpeas, cumin, fava beans, artichokes, fennel, boukha: have something to eat, here's a drink, you're all welcome."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 92 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word boukha
Wikipedia says it's a Tunisian spirit made from figs.
September 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word argan
"Could it be they've all left, slyly under cover of night, one of those mass departures encouraged by Zionist propaganda, emptying Tiznit or so many other Berber Ksours, such as Ifran in the Lesser Atlas Mountains, scree and tattoo on the rock face, heat like a furnace as we pass through the scattered argan trees, relatively dense prelude to the desert."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 91 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word nutgall
"Into the leather-crafts souk, fragrance of hides tanned with sumac and nutgall, shadow striated with light, green the dominant color, metonymy of the city."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 86 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word noria
"Politically shrewd, pleasure-seeking, a great friend to the hāra, he speaks the language of all-night revelry, respects Jewish customs and holidays, learned their poetry, recites Genesis in Aramaic, has uncovered the secrets of cabalistic interpretation, settles disputes regarding peripateticism of the Toledano and Hispanically Judeo-Arab sort, contests Avicenna's theory of emanation, combines discursive reason with the solemnity of the vagina, delights in elliptical and allusive language, lover of several Arab and Jewish entertainers, old-fashioned in taste and dress, a word lover, heartbreaker, keeper of the night, nocturnal wing, lunar matrix of riddles, noria cascading water: creaking waterwheel, wood imbibed, whispering trickle, jasmine and sweet summer, hatred of the occupier and what came before, neither is of us by body, by will: mockery of the cops and other prospective betrayers who, once they've agreed to kill, nonetheless seek to save face."
Talismano by Abdelwaheb Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 84-85 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word rebab
"The musicians, players of rebab, utar, and ney, endeavor to hammer out tunes in her praise."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 82 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word ney
Wikipedia says it's an "end-blown flute."
September 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word shott
"Ariana: settlement of Jews and Andalusian refugees cohabiting, light of white and blue, tidy streets, town squares like little stage sets, harlequin or Punch and Judy, graveyard poignantly earthbound, salt plain culminating in a shott, then sand and sea."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 80-81 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word hypostyle
"Everyone's at it, playing and parleying, circles within circles, sacred arcaded courtyard revived, hypostyle hall left to the more resourceful among them to revitalize prayer and ritual, the ten-arched loggia open to the street, where over here shkubba players keep an eye on cheaters, over there aces take all, somewhere the sound of dice and dominos, elsewhere a game of chess between two refined elderly gentlemen, pederasts surrounded by handsome boys making faces and gesticulating, sticking out tongues at any eye that lingers too long."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 78 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word cenacle
"Living words of experience, officialdom laid bare, toothless mouths accustomed to chewing furtive speech in rage at a ghetto of words with its rules and laws, at the foundation of a cenacle in need of a Judas."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 75 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word oukala
"The terrified dignitaries find no safety even when locked in their fortress houses, those not already abandoned and squatted in by legions of the rural poor who break in and settle by force in those now degraded monuments to another time, former palaces become oukalas, palatial slums."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 73-74 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word oukala
http://archnet.org/library/sites/one-site.jsp?site_id=3951 says: "Oukala designates an in-town caravanserai, a type of hotel with rooms rented on a daily or weekly basis. Since the 1930s, the old city of Tunis, the Médina was strongly affected by a population shift; the intense rural migration and the departure of its urban gentry. Many private residences and monuments of the old city were "oukalaised", i.e., turned into multi-family dwellings that sometimes sheltered up to twenty households, often the less fortunate ones, in unacceptable sanitary conditions."
September 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word dhikr
"What is this plan of yours, O carefree children born yesterday?—calm down, lest you share in the flames of hell, warns a slave to the dhikr, sanctimoniously reciting the names of Allah and turning in circles since the dawn of the century."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 72 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 22, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word lentisk
"Immobile, I have journeyed through lands and encountered saints, archive of the world, from Tafilalet to Senoussi country, their white domes dazzling hilltop and desert; sacred lentisks, holy ash tree, blessed waters, healing springs, benediction and grace upon your relentless desire to be."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 69 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 22, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word siwak
"Cleansed of what she had interiorized as an inevitable defilement, an odor that she preferred not to name, her periodic chastity; bad, black blood, she would say, yet not so bad for less delicate nostrils, curve of the waist embellished, complexion deep brown, eyes lined in kohl, thick hair, wavy, shining, black; teeth white pearls, gums like rubies or coral, rubbed with siwak, Capparis sodata, fragrance and sap of chewed bark."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 48 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 21, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word mausim
"Different vision of bodies for sale, the Middle Atlas Mountains, desert's edge, mausim, harvest festival time, ritual prostitution at rural shrines, Moulay Ibrahim and elsewhere, outside the city, beyond the constraints of urbanity, theology, business, and all the various trades that organize the history of a city like Fez that extends its influence well beyond its borders, tending to centralize and cancel out all difference, incorporating the well-to-do of other towns and regions, Souss, Tafraout, Tetouan, Taroudant, even the intractable Marrakech, into a common and coherent project facilitating the exploitation of all bodies; ensuring, thanks to the new port inherited from the former colonizers, an open-door policy, and with the blessings of the royal Cherifian family, quashing any demonstration of local power unless this be tiny and fetishistic, confining its deviance to the mountainous backcountry."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 47-48 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 21, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word pareu
"The display of practically naked bodies, hips wrapped in skimpy pareus, reproduces the rhetoric of the Tunis brothel."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 47 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 21, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word kamanjah
"Drag queen color and light, shake that thing, dime-store exotic, sailors in a port of call, gobbling down leftover couscous chilled by the pathetic eyes of a fiddler playing with neither melancholy nor hysteria, sawing away at his kamanjah, held in upright position on one knee: Tangiers, rival of continents, from its perch obsessed by two seas, tumbling seasons scatter into color-splashed crowds, throngs, dense in places: waning lives or former glories ravaged, shouldering the insignificance of what had been their worldly past, walking Pekingese on a leash, silk kimono revealing wrinkled, once-legendary thighs."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, pp 44-45 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 21, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word ambo
"Writing mixes up the seasons, resolving the usual jumble of hot and cold, summer or winter: it reflects the messiness of the body more than any primordial law: it is chaos more than fiat, a battle of giants meant to obstruct the desire to invent oneself according to some divine order: it is with us, a descent, subterranean, underworld, regression, a groping toward totality: it is the gallery that cuts through the edifice end to end, the ambo breaking up the uniformity of narrative space."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 43 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 18, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word dulia
"I won't say that what appears here are the words of a drunk. No, it's a dead man breathing life into his dulia, fragility that entangles the body and keeps it from any attempt to gather up all the inaccessible desire that blows away so jauntily on the breeze."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 41 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 18, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word manducation
"As for the body, which our erudite voyeur pretends to ignore, it helps dig the ditch that will unearth the compromising roots of his clerical genealogy, the scholarly and social core of a family theology that realizes its golden age is now over, impervious to healthy criticism, manducation of the immutable precepts lying virtually undisturbed these past decades by those discreet stirrings that the surrounding vacuum causes to resonate until they finally swell into an event of sorts, a slender flame commensurate with our respectfully narrow national history."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 32 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 18, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word zebiba
"Fragrance of sardine and harissa escape the grocer's shop, run by a Jerbi, stained gray smock, full moon face, zebiba on his forehead, mark of the pious who bow in prayer, greed, and acquisition of wealth, honing their instinctive sense of deprivation."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 31 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 18, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word minbar
"And what of the analogy between sex and tree, the palm whose fermented nectar, a mere drop on the tongue, transports us to the bed of Eros, ardor impatient to flee the Saharan heat by immersion in the sweat and wax of this henna-tinted, finely tattooed body—a minbar on a hip, the Ka'aba on a thigh, winglets on her shaved pubis—bodies swelling together until the eye of the needle is opened and threaded, freeing you, putting you beyond limits: musk, floral essence, mingling of honeys?"
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 15 of the Dalkey Archive Press paperback
September 16, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word assegai
"Here-elsewhere: with deadly violence, a mixture of countries traveled, pieces of a life torn to shreds, a body scraped off the ground, appearance peculiar and untidy, blood stains; sweat, strife, toil: incursion of rebel assegais where the mountain rises up in fortification."
Talismano by Abdelwahab Meddeb, translated by Jane Kuntz, p 6 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
September 13, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word clinamen
"At first it was a discrete clinamen, a slight deviation in the orderly descent of textual atoms—a not absent in one place and slipped in somewhere else."
Upstaged by Jacques Jouet, translated by Leland de la Durantaye, p 28
September 9, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word hapax
"To watch an actor in profile is a special pleasure for the connoisseur, all the more so when that actor is unknown, unexpected—and perhaps acting for the first and last time. Such an actor is, as Flavy would later remark, a hapax of the stage."
Upstaged by Jacques Jouet, translated by Leland de la Durantaye, p 18
September 9, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word phlogistic
"The headmaster turned to look again upon that which he could hardly abide: his life's work disintegrating in flames, with scant hope of phlogistic phoenix rising from its ashes."
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 459
September 4, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word pursy
""And infirmity in your pursy lungs, my good friend. Reconsider.""
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 413
September 4, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word altricial
"They are quite the opposite, their altricial nature demanding that they be nursed and nurtured for a time, or else they should die in the crib and the experiment come to naught."
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 370
September 4, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word orographically
""But a rather odd sort of Arcadia, orographically speaking, for the valley that would come to be known as Dingley Dell lies within what is known as the Allegheny Front—the dividing line between the eastern edge of the Allegheny Plateau escarpment…"
"…and the lower Allegheny Mountains," broke in Mr. Graham, excitedly."
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 369
September 4, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word weazen
"Artisans and tradesmen of the working class used Westminster when necessary to ply their trade within the weazen, dilapidated neighbourhood that now included Scadger's new domicile, and now and then lowly men in Scadger's impoverished league were driven by necessity to venture in the opposite direction to bear the sort of cold reception that had come to Scadger in Skettles' apothecary shop."
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 332
September 4, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word atrabilious
""These conditions are appalling," said Sir Dabber with an atrabilious shake of the head."
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 306
September 4, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word stramonium
"We've tried large doses of every remedy that can be compounded: bromide of potassium, belladonna, chloride of aluminum, ferrous sulfate, quinine, tartar of arsenic, stramonium tobacco."
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 300
September 4, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word venatic
"In his youth he had wrestled upon a mat in the manner of the Greeks and had downed the largest buck in the eastern wood as was ever felled by bow and arrow—that record holding itself in perpetuity given the fact that hunting in both woods was now prohibited (though the law was broken now and again, almost exclusively by members of the congenitally-venatic Scadger clan)."
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 278
September 4, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word camlet
"As the family drew nearer that point which offered our best vantage, I saw that Muntle had identified the brother correctly; there was Harry and there was his wife Matilda, each drest in cast-off and multiply-mended clothing, the husband in an old worn and faded blue camlet coat that did not befit the warm season, dragging a large gunnysack, which, no doubt, contained most of his family's paltry possessions."
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 250
September 4, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word caliginous
"Then he turned to begin his own caliginous descent down the forest path that pointed to the Outland and to all of its wondrous wonders."
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 186
September 3, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word batrachian
""You idiot. Snakes don't cough."
"How do you know? You're not an ophiologist. You're a batrachianist.""
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 167
September 3, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word elapid
""Clive—the junior Clive and not the senior Clive who is presently chopping his way through the Amazon jungle—fears that I will go and tangle myself up with that fugitive elapid. They think I'm daft sometimes, these Pellers. Now I ask you, young man: if I were so precipitant as to go draping myself with poisonous fugitive elapids, would I have survived even half of my ninety-four years? Dear me. Now you are but a boy. Do you know what the word 'precipitant' means?""
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 153
September 3, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word bryophitic
From Merriam-Webster, a bryophite is "any of a division (Bryophyta) of nonflowering plants comprising the mosses, liverworts, and hornworts."
"Newman vowed to shorten his three-day journey by a full day—that is, if the weather remained clement and if his Dinglian shoes continued to hold themselves securely upon his feet and if he was not stopped along the way by any of those who wished to do him harm, and if—finally—he could navigate his way through the woods, where the sun did not shine, and trust the moss that generally grew on the northern side of the trees to act as his bryophitic compass."
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, pp 129-130
September 3, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word gallipot
"Alas, my sister-in-law had received in exchange for her maternal overture to the sulky and stone-faced thirteen-year-old a harsh rebuff, delivered in the girl's wonted insolent fashion: "Sit for several days betwixt you and your damask-nosed crony Miss Snigsworth? Watch the two of you tossing off your gallipots of grog as if it were some ancient nepenthe? Pardon me if I decline the invitation this week or any other week, Mama, but I would rather have sharp iron nails driven into my skull.""
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, 117
September 3, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word rinceau
"Nor did he—the grandson, on his mother's side, of a top-sawyer artisan of the Folkstone Furniture Works—behold a palmette upon the headboard, or a rinceau carving gracing the footboard."
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 83
September 3, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word bumper
I didn't know the "drinking glass filled to the brim" sense of it 'til now.
""Don't tell me you haven't had orange juice before."
"Only a couple of times. It's very expensive. It comes from the orangery and one drinks it only on very special occasions. I had a glass on my eleventh birthday. Can I have more? Can you bumper it?"
"Bumper it?" asked Evelyn, the mother, as she poured.
"Yes. Fill it to the brim.""
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 89
September 2, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word bashaw
"I was most curious to know why the woman had not been better treated—she, the wife of a member of the Petit-Parliament, a Bashaw!"
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 34
September 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word squab
I knew about the bird but not about the cushions. As in:
"Mrs. Potterson nodded. "I had no idea that the Pyegraves were in such want of money. Why, he's the most prosperous draper and upholsterer in the Dell. Every squab upon which you sit was stuffed and sewn in his shop.""
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 32
September 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word mangold
"But who should not believe Dingley Dell to be the most beautiful vale in all the world (if one were to stand with the scarred and scabbed Southern Coal Ridge to one's back), with its fields of rye and oats and corn and mangold set in eye-pleasing checkerboard upon the agricultural northland, and plump rolling downs emeralding the valley's southern reach."
Under the Harrow by Mark Dunn, p 26
September 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word wisent
"As I crept along through the gloom, past engravings of wisent and aurochs and woolly rhinos, it occurred to me that I really had no clue what would drive someone to wriggle through a pitch-black tunnel to cover the walls with images that only another, similarly driven soul would see."
"Sleeping with the Enemy" by Elizabeth Kolbert, p 75 of the August 15th & 22nd, 2011 issue of the New Yorker
August 31, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word charango
"Among his charges: two bookcases filled with real and fake books; twelve banquet chairs; three candelabra; a mesh of branches that entangles Touchstone; a wicker horse; a fake deer carcass; a stuffed boar; red grape juice that doubles as wine; three tins of lychee nuts, for Gloucester's eyeballs; a bicycle and an iPod for Romeo (some liberties are taken with time period); twelve bike pumps; six Maglites; a wheelbarrow; a throne; eight skull masks; a bouquet of fake roses; a wreath with removable plastic flowers; three black parasols; a pipe for Juliet's nurse; a box of Lion chocolate bars ("We bought them in England, 'cause we weren't sure if we could get them out here," Wimperis said); a glass ashtray lined with K-Y Jelly ("If it gets knocked over, it's better than using water"); walkie-talkies; forty litres of stage blood ("It's quite sugary—like what you use to make candy floss"); a gold-on-black invitation to the Capulets' party; a metal claw with a protruding blade (for Tybalt); four short javelins and five tall ones; three fake crossbows; approximately a hundred swords and daggers (most swords are custom-made to suit the height and weight of a particular actor, and the dents from jousting are filed down between shows); ten rifles with bayonets, for the French Army in "King Lear"; ten without bayonets, for the British; the bloodied head of Decius Brutus; a box of love poems, which drop from the ceiling in "As You Like It" ("They've all been fireproofed"); one Enfield revolver; three Webley revolvers; three AK-56 assault rifles ("These are mine. I'm joking!"); four bags of plastic snow; a brace of fake pheasants; raisins for Audrey; a charango …"
- "Checklist" by Michael Schulman, p 20 of the August 8, 2011 issue of the New Yorker
August 30, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word rorter
""Everybody who was there knows that. But to all the other people in the world, I'm just the Cockney Queen, a bleeding rorter...""
The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman, p 281 of the 2008 Knopf paperback edition
August 29, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word rorter
the free dictionary/a> says: "a small-scale confidence trickster"
August 29, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word lovat
"He looked pale and battered. There was a rug over his knees. But his straw-colored hair was neatly plastered down, his high "masher" collar was immaculate, and his three-buttoned jacket in dark lovat was the very glass of fashion."
The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman, p 274 of the 2008 Knopf paperback edition
August 29, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word papaverine
"The doctor turned to the nurse. "Nurse, please go and bring me some tincture of valerian from the pharmacy. And some papaverine syrup.""
The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman, p 272 of the 2008 Knopf paperback edition
August 29, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word pernicated
"Finally she lost her temper, and threw an inkwell, shrieking in a way that didn't need translating even if Becky had known the German for "pernicated procrastinators" and "gotch-gutted Goths.""
The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman, p 130 of the 2008 Knopf paperback edition
August 28, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word pernicated
A dictionary of slang and colloquial English:
abridged from the seven-volume work, entitled: Slang and its analogues
says: "swaggering, full of side" (see Google Books)August 28, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word poodlefaker
"Damn fool, he thought. You walked right into it, you clown. Because now he'd have even less freedom than before: Gödel would pin him down in some poodle-faking routine when he ought to be out hunting this Spanish mummer—if she really did exist, and if it really was her."
The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman, p 81 of the 2008 Knopf paperback edition
August 28, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word etiquettical
"The Channel was boisterous, but seasickness is not a fit subject for discussion; any book on etiquette will tell you that. And etiquette was at the front of Becky's mind as soon as they reached dry land, for once they were on the train, the countess began to teach her and Adelaide a thousand things they'd never dreamed of: how to address the chancellor, the precise difference in rank between the younger son of a count and the elder son of a baron, how to peel an orange at table, the right sort of conversational opening to make to a bishop—every conceivable kind of etiquettical topic, until their heads rang."
The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman, p 51 of the 2008 Knopf paperback edition
August 28, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word toper
"Hals's relentless jolliness isn't confined to his genre scenes of rollicking topers, such as "Young Man and Woman in an Inn" (1623). The euphoric hero hoists a glass while being attended with fawning approval by a prostitute, a dog, and an innkeeper—three parties, according to a Dutch adage of the time, whose affections come at a cost."
"Haarlem Shuffle" by Peter Schjeldahl, in the August 8, 2011 issue of the New Yorker, pg 75
August 26, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word cantrip
"Julia had logged another couple of telephone-pole paint blobs, one of which she'd stopped and studied quite closely using some kind of visual cantrip that he hadn't caught because she hadn't wanted him to catch it—she actually hid it with one hand as she cast it with the other."
The Magician King by Lev Grossman, p 128
August 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word vergescu
"They should have been facing down bellowed challenges from black knights bearing the vergescu, or solving thorny theological dilemmas posed by holy hermits."
The Magician King by Lev Grossman, p 101
August 22, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word vergescu
http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/thwhite.htm says this is from T.H. White and is "the white shield carried by unfledged knights."
August 22, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word taffrail
"Quentin walked to the very stern and looked out over the wake, swept clean and crushed into foam by the weight of their passage. He felt good and right here. He patted the Muntjac's worn old taffrail: unlike most things and most people in Fillory, the Muntjac needed Quentin, and Quentin hadn't let her down."
The Magician King by Lev Grossman, p 53
August 19, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word arrah
"Con gaped. And then he blushed. It was a new sensation; the others couldn't see it in the rain and the murky lamplight, but he felt it most acutely.
"Arrah," he moaned. "Man, I beg yer pardon. If I'd known ye was Jewish I'd ... I'd...I'd bloody fight for them.""
The Tiger in the Well by Philip Pullman, p 345 of the Dell/Laurel-Leaf paperback
August 13, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word crimp
I didn't know the "A person who tricks or coerces others into service as sailors or soldiers" definition of this word, but that's how Philip Pullman uses it, here, though he's using it more generally as "a person who tricks or coerces others":
""Where are the crimps working from?" said Goldberg.
"Off the Pier Head, sir. St. Katharine's Basin. See, there's sixty, maybe seventy people to come ashore, maybe more. They offload 'em at the Pier Head, then they can get away straight up Little Thames Street. You seen all them cabs? The cabmen got wind of this trade in the last month or so. They put a copper there regular now, to control 'em. There was nearly a hundred there last week."
He pushed off, then slipped the oars into the oarlocks and started to pull away with short, light strokes.
"What are crimps?" said Sally.
"Parasites," said Goldbergs. "Swindlers. Minor criminals. Those vultures you saw back there.""
The Tiger in the Well by Philip Pullman, p 237 of the Dell/Laurel-Leaf paperback
August 12, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word whisticaster
"For answer she went and kissed him.
"Well, that's better than a whisticaster in the rattlers," he said.
"A what?"
"A smack in the gob. Good idea, then, is it?"
The Shadow in the North by Philip Pullman, p 206 of the Knopf paperback edition
August 6, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word whisticaster
http://www.bookrags.com/tandf/whisticaster-tf/ says:
"A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English
whisticaster
. A further var. of prec"
- which I think must refer to the previous term in the dictionary, which is "whister-clister." Of this, http://www.bookrags.com/tandf/whister-clister-tf/ says:
"whister-clister
, -snefet, -snivet. A cuff on the ear or the side of the head: resp. late C.18–mid-19 (Grose, 1st ed.), then dial.; C.16 (Udall); C.16 (Palsgrave: OED). Perhaps a reduplication of whister, that which ‘whists’ or puts to silence; even so, -clister may pun clyster, an enema, while -snefet, -snivet may be cognate with the vv.
snite snivel. Perhaps orig. dial., as the Palsgrave locus indicates; certainly dial. are the variants whisterpoop (C.17–20), whistersniff (C.19–20), and whister-twister—which last (C.18–19) is certainly a punning reduplication. See also wisty-castor."
August 6, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word goffered
"There were dresses; there were nightgowns; there were precious christening robes made of lawn, which needed the finest and most delicate stitching to repair them; there were items she was making for sale to her regular customers—pretty lace gloves, shawls, fine handkerchiefs, embroidered blouses, goffered widow's caps, filmy muslin petticoats. Everything she owned was hauled out from its tissue paper wrappings and ripped to shreds."
The Shadow in the North by Philip Pullman, p 147 of the Knopf paperback edition
August 6, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word fussock
""Drunken fussock," observed the child.
"You want to mind your manners," said Jim. "Speaking of your elders and betters like that.""
The Shadow in the North by Philip Pullman, p 117 of the Knopf paperback
August 6, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word murerk
"Look, carrot-face, get the murerk, else I'll fetch you a sockdolager what'll lay you out till Christmas," he said."
The Shadow in the North by Philip Pullman, p 116 of the Knopf paperback
August 6, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word murerk
http://www.bookrags.com/tandf/murerk-1-tf/ says:
"The Routledge Dictionary of Historical Slang
murerk
*. The mistress of the house: tramps’ c.: from ca 1855. ?burerk (BURICK) perverted."
August 6, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word armillary
"They had a way of looking all around them, but not in the same time at the same direction, that reminded Brentford of a clockwork armillary sphere and that made him feel dizzy and ill at east just as when they talked very quickly to each other in some language no one understood."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 399
July 24, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word hebdomad
"The Councillors, not knowing what to do, kept their hands up or stuck in mid-motion. She approached their dazed hebdomad and their startled servants, stiffening her backbone, cocking the hammers of her eyes."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 387
July 24, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word morion
"Brentford and the Scavengers passed through the gate to find the gigantic Varangian Guards silently lined up in a row, their barbed halberds pointed at the intruders, and quite impressive in their shining armour plates and morion helms."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 383
July 24, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word sastruga
"On this second day, the going was getting somehow smoother, with less steering around and more sastruga snow."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 262
July 24, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word aleuronate
"In the rear, a hatch in the floor led down to the hold, and flashlight in hand, Brentford checked once again that everything he needed, or hoped not to need, was there as he had ordered: pellets of Cornwallis zinc to recharge the motor fuel cells; one month's supply of "Vril-food," dried soups, pemmican cakes, cod roe, whey powder, aleuronate bread, bars of his favourite chocolate, lime juice, and coffee; a small sled and harness; a primus stove; a pharmacy; a 16-bore Paradox rifle with boxes of shotgun shells and cartridges; a caribou-fur sleeping bag; spare warm clothes; oil-cloth tarpaulins; ice-axes and guncotton powder; a toolbox with everything necessary to build and live in a snow house or an improvised cave; a captive oil-silk balloon that the could send up to project light signals on—everything that could come in useful to prolong his life or his agony."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 257
July 24, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word écorché
"A steady diet of opiate pills, Freezeland Fags, Wormwood Star Absinthe, bad coffee, and almost no food had turned his body into a thin, taut, anatomical écorché, with no muscles and all the nerves showing, the whole offering little or no protection against the outer world."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 223
July 24, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word shebeen
"Gabriel knew the story from his father, from the time when he had been Portcullis Pursuivant of the City's Civil Registry Records at the House of Honours and Heraldry. It was a story that his father liked to tell a little bit too often and it was he who had started spreading the rumour around various bars and shebeens until he had been deemed a nuisance and "put on ice.""
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 180
July 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word pluderhosen
"Behind those statues were mirrored doors that led to the various parts of the building. The Council Cabinet's was opposite the entrance archway, and this was where Brentford was introduced by one of the gigantic Varangian guards of the Council of Seven's Security Company, who wore the usual uniform of figure-eight ruff, black doublet and black and white striped pluderhosen and held a halberd in his enormous hand."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 160
July 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word pluderhosen
Wikipedia says: "Pluderhosen, a Northern European form of pansied slops with a very full inner layer pulled out between the panes and hanging below the knee" - and further says that pansied slopes are "round hose characterized by the addition of a layer of panes, or strips of fabric running from the waistband to the leg band. These are commonly referred to as "pumpkin" pants." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluderhosen)
July 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word pandiculate
"Wynne fetched his greatcoat and hat without a word, while DeBrutus pandiculated on the sofa, trying to look unconcerned."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 147
July 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word obsidional
"To the obsessively obsidional Gabriel, this was his Troy, where he would defend himself to the last. His books, lined up with a compact precision, were the battlement from which he would shoot the poisoned arrows of his wit."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 144
July 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word remanence
"The highbrow or hurried reader will be content with knowing that her "As White As..." was said to have caught the very marrow of the icy city. But that is of little use to really measure the remanence of her name to the olde-New."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 103
July 22, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word specksioneer
"He entered the pub, noted for its remarkable painting of a rather muddy and dark whale-hunting scene, asked for a Scoresby Stout and a Specksioneer Sandwich, and went to the Pneumatic Post Booth."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, pp 77-78
July 21, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word williwaw
""How much I regret it, that I am not reputed to perform random acts of kindness," answered Gabriel, as coldly as he could, which was not much, for a natural distaste for all kinds of authority quickly gave him the williwas in such circumstances."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 30
July 19, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word kamik
"Though the weather was rather chilly and wet, soldiers in fur-lined trapper hats, mittens, and kamiks were loitering in front of the barracks, playing curling or some rather clumsy soccer, with an air of relaxed resignation to the well-known drabness of the soldiering life."
Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat, p 23
July 19, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word septentrional
The epigraph to Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat is a quote from "The True Levellers Standard Advanced," attributed differently (I imagine to fit into the world of the book). So, the epigraph and its in-book attribution:
"It was shewed us by Vision in Dreams, and out of Dreams, That that should be the Place we should begin upon; And though that Earth in view of Flesh, be very barren, yet we should trust the Spirit for a blessing.
A Blast on the Barren Land, or the Standard of True Community Advanc'd, Presented to the Sons of Adam by Henry Hotspur, Being a Platform to Plant the Waste Land Of the Northern Isles & Septentrional Parts, & to Restore the Regiment of Commonwealth, Printed in the Yeer 1649"
July 18, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word Brandenburg
"He was wearing royal blue breeches of watered silk, a damask waistcoat of white and gold, and a quilted velvet smoking jacket ornamented with brandenbourgs."
Heartless by Gail Carriger, p 137
July 17, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word clinker
"Then she opened the door of the cold and silent furnace and stuck her hand inside. 'Eureka!' she shouted, with a loud, metallic echo, for there at the bottom of the furnace, with a sparse scattering of ashes and one forgotten clinker, lay the clue!"
Spiderweb for Two by Elizabeth Enright, p 195 of the 2008 paperback
July 15, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word gilt
The "young female pig" definition was new to me, too. I just came across it:
"All the cattle brought handsome sums, and then it was the pigs' turn. One by one they were displayed: the gilts, the shoats, the cranky old sow and her litter of half-grown piglets."
Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright, pp 239-240 of the 2002 hardcover edition
July 12, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word shoat
"Also there were sundry inquiries from private persons, such as the Delacey brothers, Cedric and Fitzroy, who wished to know the plans for the Meeker dogs and a certain Hampshire shoat among the livestock."
Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright, p 202 of the 2002 hardcover edition
July 12, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word boneset
"The dragonflies hung above the still surface like turquoise needles and woodpeckers knocked at the dead willow branches up above. The opposite bank was a rich jungle of jewelweed and boneset."
Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright, pp 112-113 of the 2002 hardcover edition
July 12, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word trudgeon
"Dave Addison turned out to be a star swimmer. He could do a jackknife without forgetting to unfold in time, and a swan dive without forgetting to point his toes. He could do the crawl, the trudgeon, the butterfly breast stroke, and stay underwater longer than any of them."
Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright, p 49 of the 2002 hardcover edition
July 11, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word melodeon
"The living room was full of things: tables, and lots of chairs, all with crocheted antimacassars; pictures and pennants and fans on the wall; a big melodeon at one end of the room with very old sheet music on it; and in the wide doorway there were portieres all made of beads which rattled like rain on a tin roof when Mrs. Wheelwright brushed against them."
The Four-Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright, p 56 of the 2002 hardcover edition
July 6, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word calceolaria
"The Wheelwrights' house was very interesting, though rather dim because all the windows were smothered under a profusion of potted plants. There were red geraniums, and fuchsias whose blossoms hung from their stems like costly earrings, and great overgrown begonias, and calceolarias all covered with little speckled calico pocketbooks."
The Four-Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright, p 54 of the 2002 hardcover edition
July 6, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word pongee
"Mrs. Oliphant was very glad to see them. She wore a suit made out of pongee, a hat with a green veil, an amethyst necklace, a lapis lazuli necklace, and a silver one with her eyeglasses on it."
The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright, pp 165-166 of the 2008 paperback edition
July 2, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word caddis
"Dark-green water in lakes like this, and salt water with big waves and a fishy smell; and water coming loud over a dam, and water in brooks all full of caddis houses and green moss. And water in swamps with cat-tails growing out of it. And yellow mud-puddle water that you can wade in, with the mud as soft as butter between your toes."
The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright, p 129 of the 2008 paperback edition
July 2, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word coati-mundi
"Her name was Miss Buff-Towers and she was related in some way to an earl, a fact she was very proud of and never forgot. She had long front teeth, the color of old piano keys, and a huge coiled arrangement of braided hair on top of her head like an orderly eagle's nest. She was a kindhearted creature but she knew as much about raising children as I know about raising coati-mundis. (I'm not even sure what they are."
The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright, pp 35-36 of the 2008 paperback edition
July 2, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word mycelia
"Mii knows the intricate mycelia of relations and events that are expressed in the gestures of the statues, surge into the points of daggers held over the breasts of enemies and the tips of fingers reaching out for conciliation; she knows the thousands of images and stories of the world of statues that have never achieved expression yet pulsate in stiff gestures of the body."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 245 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
June 16, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word haruspicy
"When at twenty-three the dazzlingly beautiful wife of the king is appointed president of the Devel Academy, an assembly of venerable old men who have dedicated their lives to science, jokes are cracked on all the islands of the archipelago. But the jesters are in error—Uddo has an extensive knowledge of chemistry, transformation in metals, runes, augury, archaeology, metaphysics, geometry, architecture, statics, boat-building and building of labyrinths, demonology, astronomy and haruspicy."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 198 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
June 14, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word brawn
"The islanders would often ask me about the food where I came from, so once I used several cuttlefish mushrooms to fashion for them the fare on the table of a Czech pub, with plates of goulash and dumplings, a smaller plate with brawn, a basket of bread rolls, several half-litres of beer and glasses of rum, adding while I was at it, an open pack of cigarettes and an ashtray with cigarette ends in it."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 141 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
June 13, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word jaspe
"I played on boards whose squares changed in the course of a single game. They were made of squares of darker and lighter sand sprinkled on the board. In the course of the game the wind would blow the sand about, into long patches run through with different colours, until the board became a whirl of darker and lighter twists, reminiscent of the jaspé bindings of books come to life in dreams; and the pieces would pick their way through them, before crumbling and blending in with the sand of the squares."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 128 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
June 13, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word homothetic
""You're right," the girl conceded. "You should just know that the right triangle ABC plays an important role in all of this and that Leibniz realized that if we reduce the horizontal base of this triangle, correspondingly we reduce the second cathetus so that the triangle will always remain homothetic; the relation of the two catheti maintains a constant value which is a characteristic of the curve of the line at point I."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, pp 112-113 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
June 12, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word sagitta
""It's simple, I'll show you," said the thief, taking off her black glove and drawing a quadrant in the snow with her index finger. But as she stretched to describe its base and sagitta, the y beneath her gave a fearful crack and in terror she grabbed Baumgarten by his dressing gown. He suggested she leave off the explanations: for the listener's understanding of the story of the wrecked boat a knowledge of infinitesimal calculus was probably not altogether necessary."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 112 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
June 12, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word catheti
"At point I, in the upper part of the quadrant, a tangent was made, and this—at points A and B—sprouted two metal abscissae, one parallel to line x and the other to line y. They intersected at point C inside the quadrant, thus giving the catheti of a right triangle whose hypotenuse was the segment AB in the tangent."
- The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 112 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
June 12, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word speos
"But the majority of the photos there on the desk were of the inside of the cave, its gloomy recesses lit harshly by an electric flash. Evidently the cave had many years earlier been transformed into a speos."
The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 106 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
June 12, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word saltire
"Leaning against the wall to the right of this were two dark beams, crossed, beaten together at their centres to look like a great "X"; he imagined these forming part of a framework used in the cutting of wood. Resting against this rotten saltire were the remnants of a dilapidated door, upon which were quivering the flakes of a cream-coloured varnish with which the door must once have been painted; the door's centre panel still bore a brass handle."
The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated by Andrew Oakland, p 75 of the Dalkey Archive paperback
June 11, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word calutron
"One American defense consultant told me that as yet there is "no smoking calutron," although, like many Western government officials, he is convinced that Iran is intent on becoming a nuclear state sometime in the future."
-"Iran and the Bomb" by Seymour M. Hersh, in the June 6, 2011 issue of the New Yorker, p 30
June 6, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word paramorph
"And those babes, dressed in your old cobweb clothes
—mercury, King's Lynn silk, fey dappled moon—
not changelings, those, but your dear dread own,
paramorph whose name seesaws."
-from "Oblique Strategies" by Cynthia Zarin, in The Ada Poems, p 50
June 5, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word reticulate
"My right hand saves what my left burns
as if what's left—that black cloud, those few
reticulate, neglected trees—could be kept
where everything but what you want is free."
-from "Spring Thaw" by Cynthia Zarin, in The Ada Poems, p 19
June 5, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word cynosure
"No longer able to think or write or breathe—
New York a cynosure of drink and guilt,"
"Christmas I" by Cynthia Zarin in The Ada Poems, p 7
June 5, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word tomalley
"Chilled half-lobster, with an unsightly smear of tomalley vinaigrette, gets by on its winning personality (it's well steamed and satisfying, and it's lobster, after all."
- Shauna Lyon, "Tables for Two: The John Dory Oyster Bar" in the May 30, 2011 issue of the New Yorker, p 18
May 30, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word sinamay
"These objects—darkly stained wood-and-aluminium structures with additional elements of fabric, leather, and sinamay (a stiff cloth often used in millinery)—are domestically scaled, their simple armatures recalling ambiguous sections of furniture."
- From a review of a Claire Barclay show in Art in America, December 2010, review by Lee Triming, p 158
May 28, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word gink
"From what Sinkler had seen, the man worked as hard as the road crews and had about as much to show for it. Twenty years older and too much of a gink to realize what Lucy understood at eighteen."
"The Trusty" by Ron Rash in the May 23, 2011 issue of the New Yorker, p 73
May 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word puncheon
"Sinkler stepped closer to the entrance and saw two ladder-back chairs and a small table set on a puncheon floor."
"The Trusty" by Ron Rash in the May 23, 2011 issue of the New Yorker, p 69
May 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word davit
"He peered into the mirror, improving himself, unaware of me as he worked in the half-shadow of the lifeboat which hung from the davit."
"The Cat's Table" by Michael Ondaatje, in the May 16, 2011 issue of The New Yorker, p 111
May 23, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word weasand
Ah, weasand. I'd forgotten about this word but came across it again today: "The gullet was separated and the weasand was drawn from the windpipe. They cleared the chest of its entrails."
The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds, p 49 of the Penguin paperback
May 12, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word speleological
"In the beginning I used to get postcards. At first they were warm and even jovial: Everything is fine. I'm thinking of joining the Chilean Speleological Society but don't worry, it won't interfere with my poetry, if anything the two pursuits are complementary."
Great House by Nicole Krauss, p 13
April 27, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word howay
"The plumber pitied me so much I had to press money on him, I tell W. He didn't want to take it. He'd never seen anything like it, he said, standing, looking up at the ceiling. He seemed hypnotised. He wouldn't leave, but just stood there, looking. And even when he went out the front door, he was still shaking his head. —'Howay, it's terrible, man'."
Spurious by Lars Iyer, 84
April 16, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word aorist
"But W.'s studies of ancient Greek are not progressing well, he says. It's the aorist, it defeats him every time. W.'s bumping his head against the ceiling of his intelligence, he says. I often have that feeling, I tell him. —'No, you're just lazy', W. says."
Spurious by Lars Iyer, p 34
April 15, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word curandero
"There is the old village itself and its vestigial claims to "authenticity"; the church (relatively new as southwestern churches go, having replaced an older one in 1884); the 18-year-old upscale development to the west for contrast (and for an architectural tour of another nature; it's a good survey of imagined "Santa Fe style"); the movie set in the distance the curandero's "office" with its skull on a pole; what used to be here and there (scattered adobe ruins); the quite new community center and the brand new firehouse (partially built by community work parties); yard art; an extensive petroglyph site; the cloud shows and encompassing light on ranchlands and mountains; the (diminishing) biological diversity of the creek and bosque; the mouth-watering tamales at the Tienda Anaya; and, of course, the people."
On the Beaten Path by Lucy Lippard, pp 12-13
April 10, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word prothonotary
See citation on pileated
March 31, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word pileated
"The pileated drummer's wawk—it was unignorable
that that was my song, the drummer's low wawk wawk wawk, it was unignorable,
and not the sweet sweet sweet prothonotary's warble."
"Blues Haiku" by John Shoptaw in The New Yorker, March 28, 2011, p 88
March 31, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word asyndeton
"By analyzing this "modern art of everyday expression" as it appears in accounts of spatial practices, J.-F. Augoyard discerns in it two especially fundamental stylistic figures: synecdoche and asyndeton."
The Practice of Everyday Life by Michel de Certeau, p 101
March 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word deontic
"They include the kinds of relationship this enunciation entertains with particular paths (or "statements") by according them a truth value ("alethic" modalities of the necessary, the impossible, the possible, or the contingent), an epistemological value ("epistemic" modalities of the certain, the excluded, the plausible, or the questionable) or finally an ethical or legal value ("deontic" modalities of the obligatory, the forbidden, the permitted, or the optional)."
The practice of everyday life by Michel de Certeau, p 99
March 25, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word shako
"The child was enrolled in the military academy. He received a little sword, long trousers, and a shako."
Embers by Sándor Márai, translated by Carol Brown Janeway, p 32 of the Vintage International paperback
March 14, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word shtreimel
"The Jews who stand between the sky and the city's roofs stop the rain, and when it's very cold, at Christmas, the snow falls on their shtreimels and caftans."
Curriculum Vitae by Yoel Hoffmann, translated by Peter Cole, 86
March 8, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word milo
"Late summers, early autumns, you can see something that binds
the map of this country together: the girasol, orange gold-
petalled
with her black eye, laces the roadsides from Vermont to
California
runs the edges of orchards, chain-link fences
milo fields and malls, schoolyards and reservations"
"An Atlas of the Difficult World, IV" by Adrienne Rich, in An Atlas of the Difficult World, p 11
March 6, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word cordwainer
"Now was Rusty a childish Binelli-issued nickname for his redheaded sister, or was it a reference to the scavenged nail that poked one or the other young cordwainer in the big toe and began a period of infectious infirmary that would lead to the necessity of finding a crafty activity to fill the long hours of bedridden days, an activity of which the children failed to tire, though strength returned; no by god, they never tired of this, the smell of leather, the meticulous stitching, the shodding of the people, the heady glamour, the creative juices stirring within pent-up loins, loins that hungered for the tickle of a stray red wisp tossed carelessly past a hollowed cheek—well, it is all conjecture and as such not for this report to contemplate. Shoes were made, many shoes."
Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles by Kira Henehan, p 48
February 28, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word spigarello
"Kohlrabi, spigarello, and an ever-changing variety of mushrooms (maitakes, honshemejis, and shiitakes) are among the ingredients he uses to enhance crowd-pleasing entrées like smoked duck breast, grilled polenta, and our favorite, the perfectly seared swordfish that follows."
The New Brooklyn Cookbook by Melissa Vaughan and Brendan Vaughan, p 29
February 26, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word tarantass
"Mikhail left for Siberia that night in a tarantass (a springless carriage) and covered the distance from Moscow to Irkutsk in fifteen days."
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier, p 278
February 19, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word artel
"In Yakushkin's memoir, he spends pages explaining the "artel" system the prisoners devised whereby everybody, those receiving generous stipends from home as well as those receiving little, contributed to a common account to ensure that no prisoner ever had to be in need."
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier, 276
February 19, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word froe
"At one end of the village, the old Trakt crossed a small river called the Esaulovka on an ancient ruined bridge. Its gray wooden crossbeams supported the ricketiest of planking; the planks were sawn lumber but the beams showed only the marks of a bladed tool like a froe or an adze."
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier, p 260
February 18, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word ataman
"Among his potential allies were worthies like the murderously anti-Bolshevik Cossack atamans Grigory Semeyonov and Ivan Kalmykov, who each controlled a stretch of Far Eastern railroad line."
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier, p 143
February 11, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word milt
"After salmon started coming to the nets, the food improved. Valentina made sautéed salmon steaks, and a soup of salmon heads and potatoes called ukha, and fried salmon liver and salmon milt with kasha, and salmon eggs and butter on thinly sliced black bread."
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier, p 104
February 9, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word boletus
"Picking up a boletus bigger than any I'd seen in my life, I hurried back across the tundra to the cabin. Everyone in our party had gone in there to drink tea and vodka and get warm."
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier, p 99
February 9, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word knout
"But in The Gulag Archipelago, I had read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's musings on the proper memorial for the forced labor camps of Stalin's time: "I visualize…," Solzhenitsyn wrote, "somewhere on a high point in the Kolyma, a most enormous Stalin, just such a size as he himself dreamed of, with mustaches many feet long and the bared fangs of a camp commandant, one hand holding the reins and the other wielding a knout with which to beat his team of hundreds of people harnessed in fives and all pulling hard. This would also be a fine sight on the edge of the Chukchi Peninsula next to the Bering Strait.""
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier, p 84
February 8, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word barlow
"While improvising a fishing pole for Katya from a willow sapling, I cut deep into the ball of my thumb with my barlow pocketknife, and I made a fuss about that."
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier, p 42
February 7, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word gerfalcon
"Part of The Secret History tells of the campaign of Genghis's son Jochi in 1207 against the People of the Forest. The campaign succeeded, and the People of the Forest submitted to Jochi, bringing him "white gerfalcons, white geldings, and black sables.""
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier, pp 27-28
February 6, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word brumal
"Swann will hold two auctions, beginning with a selection of ocean-liner and other transportation memorabilia (posters, photo albums, embossed china, and the like) on Feb. 3, followed by one of vintage posters, one of the house's mainstays, on Feb. 8. The latter sale celebrates all things brumal, especially sport, and includes a group of posters from the nineteen-thirties, forties, and fifties related to Dartmouth's rambunctious Winter Carnival."
The New Yorker, February 7, 2011, p 19
February 5, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word tularemia
"Galloway was authorized by the military to work on a specific set of threatening diseases that were considered potential weapons in war or in terrorism, including anthrax, smallpox, tularemia, plague, and the Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fevers."
"Going Viral" by David E. Hoffman, in The New Yorker, January 31, 2011, p 26
February 3, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word bilharzia
"Long ago, when Naima was ill with bilharzia, Father, at Mother's insistence, brought me to visit her."
"Naima" by Hisham Matar, in The New Yorker, January 24, 2011, p 69
February 2, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word anagnorisis
"He realizes everything at once like the climax of a bad Hindi musical. And then, with a certain horrid glee, he gets to the fundamental truth of it, the anagnorisis: This incident alone will keep us two old boys going for the next forty years. It is the story to end all stories. It is the gift that keeps on giving."
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, p 441 of the Vintage International paperback
February 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word galabia
"Naima had already changed out of her house galabia and into the hard fabric of her black dress, a veil wrapped tightly around her head, revealing the delicate shape of her skull."
"Naima" by Hisham Matar, in The New Yorker, January 24, 2011, p 64
February 1, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word buguyaga
""Oh, yes, surely day is de holy troot," said Hortense anxiously, fingering her plasticated carnations. "But at de same time, surely a Witness lady don' wan' look like a well, a buguyaga in de house of de Lord.""
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, p 321 of the Vintage International paperback
January 29, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word buguyaga
Jamaican - tramp - see here.
January 29, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word pickelhaube
"Irie passed her the long hat pin that was sitting on top of a butter dish. Hortense set the plastic carnations straight on her hat and stabbed them fiercely, then brought the pin back up through the felt, leaving two inches of exposed silver sticking up from the hat like a German pickelhaube."
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, p 320 of the Vintage International paperback
January 29, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word gansey
""Irie, look at you! Pickney nah even got a gansey on—child must be freezin'! Shiverin' like a Mexico bean. Let me feel you. Fever! You bringin' fever into my house?"
It was important, in Hortense's presence, never to admit to illness. The cure, as in most Jamaican households, was always more painful than the symptoms."
White Teeth by Zadie Smth, p 316 of the Vintage International paperback
January 29, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word hachure
"It was an extreme close-up of an extremely old man, the contours of his face clearly defined by line and shade, hachures on a topographic map."
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, p 279 of the Vintage International paperback
January 28, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word kaffir
""You see, Jones," said Samad, "the real mistake the viceroy made was to give the Sikhs any position of power, you see? Just because they have some limited success with the kaffir in Africa, he says Yes, Mr. Man, with your sweaty fat face and your silly fake English mustache and your pagri balanced like a large shit on the top of your head, you can be an officer, we will Indianize the army; go, go and fight in Italy, Rissaldar Major Pugri, Daffadar Pugri, with my grand old English troops! Mistake!""
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, p 75 of the Vintage International paperback
January 21, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word chappal
"Two weeks later, as Archie checked their route to Sofia, to no one in particular Samad said, "I should not be here."
As usual, he was ignored, most fiercely and resolutely by Archie, who wanted somehow to listen.
"I mean, I am educated, I am trained. I should be soaring with the Royal Airborne Force, shelling from on high! I am an officer! Not some mullah, some sepoy, wearing out my chappals in hard service. My grandfather Mangal Pande"—he looked around for the recognition the name deserved, but, being met only with blank pancake English faces, continued—"was the great hero of the Indian Mutiny!"
Silence."
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, pp 74-75 of the Vintage International paperback
January 21, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word ackee
" "Mmm," said Ryan, who was happily shoveling a plate of ackee and saltfish into his mouth on the other side of the tiny kitchen table."
White Teeth by Zadie Smith, p 33 of the Vintage International paperback
January 20, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word lapacho
"These cases you can see are made from lapacho, a wood that has no cracks that insects can penetrate; I ordered the shelves especially: they are ten hardwood boards stuck together with an insect-repellent glue, and I put glass fronts on them because books obviously accumulate dust."
The House of Paper by Carlos María Domínguez, translated by Nick Caistor, pp 36-37
January 15, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word hispid
"I don't know what compelled me at age six to transplant a bunch of buttercups from the local non-playground at the bottom of our street to my father's garden. I don't know if my buttercups were of the cursed, bristly, early, hispid, creeping, bulbous, or common variety. They were yellow."
Night Bloom by Mary Cappello, p 95
January 9, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word firebrick
"Few visitors came to that room, and when they did, they had a tendency to ask, "Is this the bricks?" meaning Carl Andre's Equivalent VIII, made from, and consisting of, 120 firebricks, which to this day remains an exciting touchstone for art skeptics and philistines everywhere. I was delighted to be able to say, "No, it's not the bricks. It's the stones.""
The Lost Art of Walking by Geoff Nicholson, pp 65-66
January 2, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word phenomime
"Instead of using various different words for walking, the Japanese use a common base verb, then add an assortment of phenomimes, which are used as adverbs. So aruku is the basic word meaning to walk, then chokochoko aruku is to toddle, noronoro aruku is to inch along, furafura aruku is to shamble or teeter, and zorozoro aruku is to swarm or cluster."
The Lost Art of Walking by Geoff Nicholson, p 24
January 2, 2011
knitandpurl commented on the word embonpoint
"then she goes over the clothes she needs, B said, above all drawers and a corset that fits like a glove, A said, she wants to keep her shape, and says she has too much belly, she ought to give up beer, B recalled, but that embonpoint is by no means Molly's weak point, A said,"
The House of Ulysses by Julián Ríos, translated by Nick Caistor, p 260
December 27, 2010
knitandpurl commented on the word hierogamy
"The union in the here and now becomes hieroghamic on The Sweets of Sin, Professor Jones said, though the oghamic script is here substituted for by the simple and modified Irish characters..."
The House of Ulysses by Julián Ríos, translated by Nick Caistor, p 251
December 27, 2010
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