Words

[meridian_rose]

Obviously, as an avid reader and writer, I love words. So this post is all about wordy things.

There's a great list of The 100 Most Beautiful Words in English which I originally saw featured on Tumblr. It includes some of my favourite words like 'wherewithal' 'ethereal' and 'dalliance'.

I also love learning new words. Pratchett novels are the place I learn most of my new words, followed by historical novels with words for things that no longer exist or are no longer common, and then everything else I hear/read be it on the tv, in a newspaper, or online in anything from news articles to fanfic. Here are some I've come across recently.

The brother in law lent me a trilogy called Orcs and I'm very much enjoying it. It tells a fantasy story from the POV of the traditionally much maligned Orcs. Human's environmental destruction is depleting the magic of the land, to the chagrin of the Elder Races such as orcs, dwarves, elves and trolls. It's a well written tale and as a bonus I've learned several new words within the first novel/novella and the start of the second.

Suspiration – to breathe or to sigh. It's a pretty words and I think I'll try to add it to my list.

Concatenation – something linked or interconnected.

Clinker – stony residue from burnt coal. Interestingly this was part of a description of dragon dung with nuggets of clinker within it.

Redoubt – I'd heard of redoubtable [feared, formidable] although contextually I assumed this was a province or canton. In fact it refers to a stronghold: "an isolated work forming a complete enclosure of any form, used to defend a prominent point;
an independent earthwork built within a permanent fortification to reinforce it." ((x)) The place in question in the novel is a walled and gated settlement.

Descry – contextually it was hard to work out 'their magic was of the descry variety' but logically I should have guessed from 'scry' that this means to catch sight of/to discover, especially of something difficult to see. A literary word, but a great one for fantasy fiction.

From brontefanatic's excellent fic Forbidden Fruit :

Gulled – contextually this was obvious as 'duped, fooled' but I'd never come across this word. Gullible, however, seems to come from the same root, Gull: to fool [verb]/ a person who is fooled or deceived [noun].

From a game show, of all places:

barbe-à-papa – a French term literally meaning 'father's beard' but which refers to the stuff known as candy floss in the UK, cotton candy in the US, and fairy floss in Australia.

Comments

[hrhrionastar.livejournal.com]

Ooh, new words :D

I knew concatenation and descry, both excellent. Suspiration is pretty :)

That list was really interesting. I like diaphanous, and also I'm thinking that if I ever have time it would be fun to write a story using all 100, although some are quite obscure...still ;)

[meridian_rose]

That would be quite a challenge but it's a great idea and I'd love to see how you'd use some of the obscure words from the list :D

[jmetropolis.livejournal.com]

I liked this post, particularly the French word for cotton candy. It reminds me of the Spanish word for popcorn, palomitas de maíz. It literally translates to little corn pigeons. They're both junk food metaphors.

[meridian_rose]

Oh, that's a fun one :D Thanks for sharing!