Phrases/words that you love

[RichardB]

anfractuous

atrabilious

These words are new to me. The first of the two could be useful.

[french frank]

These words are new to me. The first of the two could be useful.

Tortuous?

[Joseph K]

These words are new to me. The first of the two could be useful.

The first I first encountered in one of Will Self's works, though I think he got it from T.S. Eliot - Sweeney Erect - 'anfractuous rocks'...

[Bryn]

Two that I really like are lutulent and invericund.

[Joseph K]

Two that I really like are lututent and invericund.

Google doesn't recognise the first. I recognise the second but had to look it up.

[french frank]

The first I first encountered in one of Will Self's works, though I think he got it from T.S. Eliot - Sweeney Erect - 'anfractuous rocks'...

Just as a matter of interest, I wonder why a writer would choose to use a word which 80%+ readers will be unfamiliar with when it's not describing anything out of the ordinary (OED 'craggy, rugged'), especially when it's (slightly) more commonly used in a different sense: i.e. 'winding, twisting'. I don't think I could ever get to love it

[Bryn]

Google doesn't recognise the first. I recognise the second but had to look it up.

I used lutulent in the headline of a report on a very muddy student demonstration for a student union newspaper, back in the day. I learned both words from Ulysses.

[smittims]

Americanisms are often criticised, but one I think useful is 'thru'.

January thru March: the only way to say this unambiguously in English is 'from the start of the first of January to the end of the thirty-first of March inclusive'. It can be crucial in legal matters, where a required perieod of, say, 'three months' is not defined with enough precision to prevent quibbles in court. I recall such a case where the defendant had observed thirteen weeks and claimed that was 'three months', when in fact it was a day short.

[Joseph K]

Just as a matter of interest, I wonder why a writer would choose to use a word which 80%+ readers will be unfamiliar with when it's not describing anything out of the ordinary (OED 'craggy, rugged'), especially when it's (slightly) more commonly used in a different sense: i.e. 'winding, twisting'. I don't think I could ever get to love it

Well, in Eliot's case you could point to the fact that in poetry things like number of syllables and their scansion/stress-pattern are all part of the aesthetic affect - though in prose too, some people might argue, these things are to be taken into account.

[Joseph K]

I used lutulent in the headline of a report on a very muddy student demonstration for a student union newspaper, back in the day. I learned both words from Ulysses.

Cool! I think Google didn't know because you typed 'lututent' in #244 not 'lutulent'.

[french frank]

Well, in Eliot's case you could point to the fact that in poetry things like number of syllables and their scansion/stress-pattern are all part of the aesthetic affect - though in prose too, some people might argue, these things are to be taken into account.

Yes, when it gets to the purely creative use of language there's no argument to be made. It's the exact opposite of the sub-editor's training where they have to imagine their potential reader and ensure the copy will be comprehensible. LCD stuff. Poets don't have to bother about that. So for 'anfractuous' I'd use either tortuous OED sense 1 or rugged, craggy (as in Anfractuous Island) in OED sense 2

It's certainly a puzzle if you know your Latin where anfractuosus means convoluted, prolix, protracted; from anfractus - a circumlocution or bend. Does using the word have any effect except to send one to one's dictionaries to check for a likely meaning?

[Bryn]

Cool! I think Google didn't know because you typed 'lututent' in #244 not 'lutulent'.

I thought I had corrected that. I have now.

[Joseph K]

Does using the word have any effect except to send one to one's dictionaries to check for a likely meaning?

The word of course has synonyms, but then as you have demonstrated in other important respects it's unique, in that it has more than one definition, a particular etymology and hence has an ambiguous and metaphorical sense to it. This kind of heightened meaning makes poetry what it is (not to mention playfulness of rhythms etc.) rather than disregarding the audience or defenestrating comprehensibility, the opposite is the case.

Anyway, I am fond of Will Self and as such am used to consulting the dictionary. I am a fan of rare vocab anyway, finding such things more colourful.

[RichardB]

At a certain stage in your life, of course, everything you read contains words you hadn't come across before. Why should it be necessary or desirable for that to come to an end?

[Mandryka]

I must say, I'm very keen on the English word "fuck" -- just think of how semantically rich it is

fuck up
fuck over
fuck with
fuck around
fuck a duck
fucked off
fuckface
Sweet fuck all
fuck knows
fuck off
Go fuck yourself
I don’t give a flying fuck
fuck buddy
fuck you
fuck bomb

and so on.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuck

For those who don't know it, perhaps its best use in drama is in the famous "fuck scene" of the American drama The Wire

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3n34oj