New word!

Nikky Lee

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Patricia D said:
How about ululate, a word that sounds a bit like its meaning? I'd love to use it in a story but hesitate for fear of annoying readers
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It would be good to describe a singer of an unknown language, while in a fantastic land. A fantastic setting comes with the expectation of fantastic language.
 
Therianthropy: the mythical ability of humans to change into animals.
Therianthrope: half-human, half-animal.
I was aware of lycanthropy but not the more generic term above.
 
And great find by the way.[/QUOTE]
Patricia D said:
How about ululate, a word that sounds a bit like its meaning? I'd love to use it in a story but hesitate for fear of annoying readers
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The only time you will annoy a read with a word is if you use it too often.

(My two bugbears with Rowling were her obsession with the colour gold, and her constant use of a vocal mannerism for far too many characters: when discussing another character, said speaker mentions their name at the end of the sentence as a reminder to the reader about whom they were speaking.)
 
Marc Joan said:
Came across a new word last night, while reading my bedtime story [Justine, by Laurence Durrell]. I love finding new words. Thought I'd share it:
BANAUSIC: Mundane, not operating on an elevated level: banausic - definition of banausic in English from the Oxford dictionary
Anyone else found any good ones recently?
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Banausic is good. I have not come across that one before. I like "eleemosynary" (adj. - provided through charity). Charlotte Brontë used it once - I forget where. Has anyone else ever used it? I haven't. Is it social custom which causes some words to become outdated? Or, like "banausic" why are some words not in common currency?
 
Pleonasm: the use of more words or parts of words than are necessary or sufficient for clear expression—as in a tiny little child or my own bugbear, which is often heard on television, very unique.
 
I started reading Selected Verse, by Don Paterson last night. He's new to me, a highly-praised Scottish poet who's won lots of poetry prizes.

In the first poem in the collection, The Ferryman's Arms, I came across a new word: 'mussitates.'

The boat chugged up to the little stone jetty

without breaking the skin of the water, stretching,

as black as my stout, from somewhere unspeakable

to here, where the foaming lip mussitates endlessly,

trying, with a nutter's persistence, to read

and re-read the shoreline.

Mussitate means to talk indistinctly and quietly—to mumble—it's nicely onomatopoeic. I don't think it will be of any use in my Cornish Detective novels, but it might appear in some of my poetry.
 
I found a word new to me, that I first thought was a printing mistake as the character was examining his canities reflected in a mirror. I figured he was checking his teeth, but then he patted his canities into place.

Canities are hairs that have lost their pigment, turning them grey, silver or white.

I have lots! :rolleyes:

 
I'm currently writing a second story set in war-torn North Carolina in 1868. My protagonist, a Union army veteran, meets a gold prospector in a general store who is smoking a corncob pipe, puffing out some pungent fumes.

I briefly wondered about making his tobacco marijuana, but a quick bit of research showed that the Cannabis sativa plant didn't make it that far north until the early 20th-century. Then, I thought of the herbal mixture that Native Americans smoke in their medicine pipes.

It's called kinnikinnick and the ingredients vary, depending on location, but include tree bark, roots, leaves and flowers.

It's not a word that anyone would use, other than in a story set in the American West, but it's really fun to say! :p
 
Ah well, here are my contributions, discovered when researching a forthcoming voyage to Cuba:

Syncretism is the combining of two or more different belief systems and it is the basis of Cuban art

Santeria is the fusion of West African religion with Catholicism and focuses heavily on saint worship which is where the word Santeria comes from
 
It sounds unlikely, but funambulism is the proper term for tightrope walking...which is probably best done when not suffering from somnambulism!

It can also be used to describe a feat of mental agility.

2960b860550f959c53e0216947723031--snoopy-quotes-peanuts-characters.jpg
 
I've known this word for ages, but it's one of those words that I keep forgetting—mainly because I don't use it very often.

Aglet is the word for the plastic or metal sheath used on the end of shoe laces, cords and drawstrings. It stops the threads unravelling, and makes it easier to push the lace through eyelets.

I tend to think 'ferrule' when trying to remember aglet, but that's the sleeve used on pencils to hold an eraser in place, or on pool and snooker cues to secure the tip, and on tools, such as a screwdriver, to clamp the blade.

TOP TIP: If you lose the aglet off the end of your lace, making it tricky to thread through the eyelet, apply a match flame to the end of the lace to melt and harden the fibres.

Aglet would be a good surname for a fussy person!

words-for-things-you-didnt-know-have-names-aglet-1282@1x.jpg
 
I live in a very noisy location, so listen to music played through earbuds while I write. I was playing Tom Waits' album Rain Dogs album this morning. I always smile at his lyrics, and curious about a line in the song Cemetery Polka, where he declares a character is "As independent as a hog on ice," I looked up the derivation of the expression.

It always conjours up an image of a hog madly scrabbling for purchase on a frozen pond, but apparently it comes from the currently topical Olympic sport of curling, where the granite stone that curlers slide across the ice is known as a 'hog.'

hogonice.png
 
In reading a book of philosophy, I came across a phrase that made me smile—'divine afflatus'. It was in a section on the art of writing.

I knew that 'flatus' is a posh way of saying 'farting', but the definition of 'afflatus' is "a strong creative impulse; divine inspiration."

Just as well that I'm a windbag!
 
I also have to mention this: I like playing a game called "Wordament", which turns up a lot of words I've never heard. Fortunately, I can go to Google on the same smartphone and get a definition instantly. This morning I looked up "flamen," which turns out to be a Roman pagan priest with special duties toward a particular god. By complete coincidence, this will work well in a fantasy novel I'm trying to write. My readers can just go look it up themselves.
 
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Nikky Lee

Free event: Getting published as a debut author

  • Nikky Lee
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Steve C

The Craft

  • Steve C
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