Now we know.

[slemslempike]

I looked up the words from the book, and I thought that I would post them here so that a) I might have a better chance of remembering and b) people can judge me for not knowing them and c) other people can say that they too were previously unknowing. A few I roughly knew from context but wanted to know properly (uxorious, synecdoche) but most were completely baffling.

irenic - conducive to peace
uxorious - overly submissive to a wife
gravamen - grievance, basis of a legal action
strabismus - eye misalignment
bibulous - given up to the consumption of alcohol
adipose - pertaining to fat
adumbrate - give a sketchy outline of, to indistinctly foreshadow
lineaments - facial features
sidereal - relating to stars
sempiternal - dateless, no known beginning
meniscus - curved surface of liquid in a narrow diameter tube
noumenal - unknowable
penumbra - the area of a shadow in partial vision, the lighter part of an eclipse's shadow
chiaroscuro - use of light and dark in a painting
apophthegms - short pithy instructive saying
farouche - fierce, wild
synecdoche - referring to a concept by part of it
apian - relating to bees
monad - one, a unit
afflatus - creative inspiration
Procrustes - Greek guy with an adjustable bed
Ziggurat - step pyramid from Ancient Mesapotamia

I like sempiternal a lot, and noumenal. I am probably not going to remember any of them sufficiently to use them myself, but perhaps if I meet them again in writing it won't take me out of it.

Wednesday. What happens on Wednesdays?

Comments

[lsugaralmond.livejournal.com]

I heart the English language. I bet no other language has a word for curved surface of liquid in a narrow diameter tube. We are the bestest.

Also, I only knew one of them! Adipose. I thought Uxorious and Lineaments meant something entirely different to what they actually mean (not exactly sure what I thought they meant, but definitely not those things!) and the rest of them I have never heard of, and would swear you are making them up in a hilarious prank to make us all feel intellectually inferior. Except obviously you would never do that.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I thought Will Self was making them up in an hilarious prank to make me feel stupid when I was reading the book, but it turns out not, I am just not as clever as I like to think.

Probably we get to share that word with other languages, because it's a sciencey thing, but we do indeed rock.