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von Darkmoor
Small Press Publisher (and Dancer still)
      
Date Joined Dec 2005
Total Posts : 3056
| Posted 11/30/2006 10:45 AM (GMT -5) |   | Nice, here I was eating my over-easy eggs with breakfast biscuits and gravy and I get the definition of crepitation as a side order. You know, as I sit here listening to my food cool, I can easily picture this word . . . 
I no longer have the book in question (borrowed from and returned to a friend), but nictitated was toward the end of a long sentence describing the awakening of a long-asleep creature that had been chained to a menhir for centuries. It basically was telling the reader the creature slowly stretched (I pictured a cat's stretch) and slowly opened its eyes to look at the character waking it up. However, nictitated came toward the end of the long sentence fully describing the creature's face and followed two adjectives that described the color of its eyes, so it was a rather drawn-out description that had already been way over the top by the time it even got to nictitated. Something like, ". . . blah blah blah, their golden amber nictitated aware . . ." I've done the sentence in question no justice, but I hope you get the idea.
This sentence also came not long after the one that described this other character (a desicated skeletal corpse, millenia dead) as having caried teeth, which I had to look up and discovered that it meant 'decayed', which I had gathered by its context but was still irritated I had to make sure of it. So when I got to nictitated I wasn't quite sure if it was an adjective or a verb and what exactly the eyes looked like, so I had to look it up. And it wasn't even in my dictionary, but it was in the electronic dictionary of a friend who has a palmpilot thingy and just happened to be near when I vocalized my disgust that my dictionary did not have the word.
I'll agree, it is a fine word and meant exactly what the author intended, but after following the convoluted trail it took to get there, 'blinked' would have worked so much better.
Thanks for crepitant by the way 
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Jason M. Waltz
~ Get with it @ www.vondarkmoor.blogspot.com Today! | | Back to Top | | |
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Keralen
Adept
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 555
| Posted 11/30/2006 1:54 PM (GMT -5) | | Sorry about the biscuits, Jason!
As for "caried," yeesh, only a dentist uses that word. "Rotten" is fine for S&S. | | Back to Top | | |
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Christopher_Heath
Eternal Champion
Date Joined Oct 2005
Total Posts : 1156
| Posted 12/3/2006 4:11 AM (GMT -5) | | I never fault writers for their vocabularies or word usage, but for my preference about 1 obscure word a page is enough. I don't expect writers to limit themselves because the reader might not appreciate the language, and I can't really fault them for my own ignorance. I'd never heard of "thews" until I read Robert E. Howard, and even had an editor make me assure her that it was an actual word when I used it in a tale. How would Lovecraft read if he tried to dumb it down for all the simpletons? You have to think about these things before you bash writers for using exotic words. It does make the tale less commercial these days, but if a writer cares about art more than $, let him have his way, I would say.
Christopher M. Heath
"Azieran: The Conquerors" in Chimaera Serials
"Azieran: Pawn of the Serpentine Witch" in Chronicles of Fantasy by ComStar Media
"Azieran: Sentinel of an Ageless Reign" in Chronicles of Fantasy by ComStar Media
"Azieran: The Lakeshorn Mirrors" in Chronicles of Fantasy by ComStar Media
"Azieran: Crestfallen in Mal'kyrrik" serialized novella in Forgotten Worlds
"Azieran: Wyrd Sins" in Rogue Worlds
"The Coruscate King" in Freehold: Betrayal - Ghourlesh Book I
"Azieran: Beyond the Black Veil" in Stalking Shadows
"Azieran: In the Wake of Ain Koph's Fall" in Grendelsong #4
"Azieran: Kaiburr the Rotund" in Blood, Blade, and Thruster
+ others
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Keralen
Adept
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 555
| Posted 12/4/2006 9:58 AM (GMT -5) | | | Crepitate, crepitating, crepitant, crepitation. I have doubts about "crepitize," however. | | Back to Top | | |
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Frank
Adept
Date Joined Aug 2005
Total Posts : 629
| Posted 6/14/2007 1:20 PM (GMT -5) | | Not every writer can get away with an exotic lexicon. If you take the Pat Conroy approach to writing ("There is great power in stating something simply and well.") either by choice or because you can't write any other way, then the occasional baffling word will seem jarring (and ripe for ridicule). But if your natural writing voice is eloquent, articulate prose (Dickens, Wells, Poe, Lovecraft, etc.) then by all means call things by their proper name and describe them as beautifully and exotically as you can.
I talked a little bit about this in another thread where I said I'd been reading The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman, something about British writers seeming more able to pull off this poetic prose language better than American writers because it just sounds fake and silly when writers on our side of the Atlantic try it today. Poe and Lovecraft did it very well but they weren't trying to sound like that, it was simply the style of their respective times and they were good writers.
Now again I'm taking the elitist rather than the proletariate view, which I know many in this forum find disagreeable, but I strongly believe that any art should be left to those with a natural talent for it, and if that talent allows you to use well language that some readers might find unusual or annoying because they have to work for it a little, that's the reader's problem, not the writer's. Just write in the voice that comes naturally to you and nothing will feel out of place. | | Back to Top | | |
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Hermit
Diavhrati Luminary
Date Joined May 2007
Total Posts : 1729
| Posted 6/14/2007 1:50 PM (GMT -5) | |
*verdigrised *caried *nictitated *enisled *machicolations *serried *prang So, how many did you know?  *verdigrised -knew verdigris, but never saw it with ed (whoever ed is) *caried (thought it a misspelling) *nictitated - isn't this the experience of the morning's first cigarette?  *serried - figured is was close to serrated *prang - I'm guessing this was intended as an elite pun, the kind you drop in wondering how many readers will 'get' it and of those who don't how many will mention it in an online forum. So, I guess I knew one and sort of figured out a couple others. Thanks for the post though. I was actually looking for 'nictitated' to describe the membrane that covers amphibians' eyes under water - only it's actually a drow in a volcanic cavern and they protect his eyes from the heat and toxic gases.
LOST some text. GRRRR
Machicolations: This is where student loan vendors get you after you matriculate.
Exile of my own dull vice. . . | | Back to Top | | |
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crystalwizard
Forum Moderator
Date Joined Nov 2006
Total Posts : 5004
| Posted 6/14/2007 3:19 PM (GMT -5) | | Bitter Hermit said...*verdigrised *caried *nictitated *enisled *machicolations *serried *prang So, how many did you know? VIEW IMAGE *verdigrised -knew verdigris, but never saw it with ed (whoever ed is) *caried (thought it a misspelling) *nictitated - isn't this the experience of the morning's first cigarette? VIEW IMAGE *serried - figured is was close to serrated *prang - I'm guessing this was intended as an elite pun, the kind you drop in wondering how many readers will 'get' it and of those who don't how many will mention it in an online forum. So, I guess I knew one and sort of figured out a couple others. Thanks for the post though. I was actually looking for 'nictitated' to describe the membrane that covers amphibians' eyes under water - only it's actually a drow in a volcanic cavern and they protect his eyes from the heat and toxic gases.
American Heritage Dictionary
prang (prāng) Pronunciation Key
tr.v. pranged, prang·ing, prangs Chiefly British
1. To crash (an airplane, for example).
2. To damage by colliding with (a car, for example).
3. To bomb from the air.
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American Heritage Dictionary
nic·ti·tate (nĭk'tĭ-tāt') Pronunciation Key
intr.v. nic·ti·tat·ed also nic·tat·ed, nic·ti·tat·ing also nic·tat·ing, nic·ti·tates also nic·tates
To wink. See Synonyms at blink.
[Medieval Latin nictitāre, nictitāt-, frequentative of Latin nictāre.]
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no entry on dictonary.com for caried. From a little more extensive research, it appears to be an alternate spelling for the americanized carried.
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American Heritage Dictionary
en·isle (ěn-īl') Pronunciation Key
tr.v. en·isled, en·isl·ing, en·isles
1. To make into an island.
2. To set apart from others; isolate.
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American Heritage Dictionary
ma·chic·o·la·tion (mə-chĭk'ə-lā'shən) Pronunciation Key
n.
1.
1. A projecting gallery at the top of a castle wall, supported by a row of corbeled arches and having openings in the floor through which stones and boiling liquids could be dropped on attackers.
2. One of these openings.
2. A row of small corbeled arches used as an ornamental architectural feature.
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American Heritage Dictionary
ser·ried (sěr'ēd) Pronunciation Key
adj. Pressed or crowded together, especially in rows: troops in serried ranks.
Past participle of obsolete serry, to close ranks, from French serré, past participle of serrer, to crowd, fasten
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American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source
ver·di·gris (vûr'dĭ-grēs', -grĭs', -grē') Pronunciation Key
n.
1. A blue or green powder consisting of basic cupric acetate used as a paint pigment and fungicide.
2. A green patina or crust of copper sulfate or copper chloride formed on copper, brass, and bronze exposed to air or seawater for long periods of time.
[Middle English vertegrez, from Old French verte grez, alteration of vert-de-Grice : verd, green; see verdant + de, of (from Latin dē; see de-) + Grice, Greece.]
verdigrised is a made up word and I don't see how it can be properly used.
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