Vocabulary!
I was told when I was young by my father that, if you want to have a good vocabulary (1) look up any word you do not know in a dictionary and (2) if you use it correctly at least three times, the word is yours. Because I followed this advice, I have always had a particular love of words and their correct meaning (and a particular horror of their politically correct meaning).
So here are some words I will no doubt try to work into my writing in the future.
Incruental — Unbloody; not attended with blood; as, an incruental sacrifice.
Faineance — laziness; the state of being idle.
Mithridatic — Tolerance or immunity to a poison acquired by taking gradually larger doses of it.
Disquiparant – An object so related to a second that the latter is in a different relation to it. Thus, a husband is a disquiparant, a spouse an equiparant.
Nitid — bright; lustrous.
Absquatulate — To flee; abscond.
Rebarbative — Serving or tending to irritate or repel.
Apophysis — 1. In anatomy, a natural swelling, projection, or outgrowth of an organ or part, such as the process of a vertebra. 2. In geology, a branch from a dike or vein.
Laicism — 1. the nonclerical, or secular, control of political and social institutions in a society. 2. lay participation in church matters.
Antinopomancy — Divination through the study of women’s or children’s entrails.
Many of my vocabulary words in my youth were introduced to me by Jack Vance who is a masters of the written word. To say more would be nuncupatory. If you are not familiar with Vance, you have cheated yourself.
“Laicism” (a word useful, if not invaluable for describing the current day) as well as “apophysis”, “nitid” and “rebarbative” I came across in the writings of David B. Hart, whom I recommend. A sample of his work is here.
“Mithridatic” I stumbled across from this commentary by Superversive. Mithradates, like the Dread Pirate Roberts, had apparently build up an immunity to poison.
Superversive writes: What we are dealing with here, I am afraid, is an objective depravity of taste. Like any outré stimulus, torture porn is mithridatic: you have to keep increasing the dose to experience the thrill. The addict seeks worse and worse horrors to satisfy his bloodshot physical craving, until either he gives up the quest, or becomes so dependent upon that one thrill that he loses the appetite for anything else.
“Faineance”in turn is related to this article by Leo Grin on the eternally risible bad taste and tin-eared stumble-footedness of the Cultural Elite when it comes to JRR Tolkien.
Leo Grin writes: Tolkien considered the free-love drug mob and its associated subgroups “cults of faineance and filth” that mindlessly smashed everything Old and Noble and Sacred while simultaneously embracing everything New, Hip, and Easygoing, all in a foolish, futile attempt to deconstruct and experiment their way to an earthly Utopia.
Leo Grin does not give the whole quote. In 1968 Tolkein wrote to his son Michael about “the behaviour of modern youth, part of which is inspired by admirable motives such as anti-regimentation, and anti-drabness, a sort of lurking romantic longing for ‘cavaliers’, and is not necessarily allied to the drugs or the cults of faineance and filth.”
This is not a quote from Tolkein I before have heard. Amazing where the search for new and interesting words can lead.
Uh, and just never mind where I discovered the word “antinopomancy.” Some things are best not to inquire.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
