I am a word-a-holic.
I love words, particularly the weird words, and collect them as far as you can pin down and display words.
So, I was delighted when a dear friend, who understands these wee obsessions of mine, gave me the gorgeous little hard cover book From afterwit to zemblanity: 100 endangered words brought to life, by Simon Hertnon. A big part of the charm of this book is not just the words, but the reasons Hernon decided to include them.
Take for example the word holophrasis, which is defined as 'the expression of a whole phrase or combination of ideas by one word'. He cites the example of a toddler being a living example of holophrasis in action... 'ball!' or 'swing' ...one word conveys so much from the mouth of an expectant or stroppy kid.
Hertnon includes neologisms as well as archaic word in this book, including this one, which can so often apply to writers... infonesia...'an inability to remember location of information...'
Suffer from that one quite frequently.
And perhaps one more example, for the procrastinators out there... perendinate...'to defer until the day after tomorrow...'
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3 comments:
It's a nice touch that discussions of the top word on the cover, sprezzatura, often begin by discussing its untranslatability into English. And afterwit? Now, there's a word with which one could have lots of fun.
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Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
This book has a couple of meanings, the one Hertnon likes best is 'Studied carelessness' which is as he puts it 'a delicious oxymoron.'
Peter, after your recent blog posts you'll be interested to see the author states that "Sprezzatura is what Maxwell Smart and Inspector Clousseau passionately desired but comically failed to achieve..."
Very nice! Sprezzatura would be what Maxwell Smart displayed as he leaned toward his desk, smiling and looking down his nose at 99, but lost when his elbow missed the desk, and he tumbled to the floor. I believe the word achieved its greatest fame thanks to Baldessare Castiglione's The Courtier, which I probably should have read when I was studying art history.
I like afterwit for its potential variants. A writer who strains after but fails to achieve a certain verbal sprezzatura may be called an afterwit. And "Afterwit? He's not even a prewit!" has a nice edge.
==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
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