Words jotted in the back cover of Love Lies Bleeding (1948), a paperback copy donated to the thrift store. It's a mystery by Edmund Crispin––I'm not much of a mystery reader and had never heard of him.
mirific perspicuity
obscurantist ineluctable
efficacy approbation
parsimony syncope
astigmatic dolorously
voluble inanition
sybaritic acerbly
prolegomenon
Funny how words travel in clumps. Like vacationers abroad, you can recognize them by their clothes & manners.
(What's the term for that phenomenon? I found culture language; speech communities; and languaculture.)
I don't know half the words on the list well enough to define them cold (out of context).
In my world, "mirific" looks like Miri-fic, that is, fan fiction about the Star Trek episode, "Miri", in which the young teenager Miri (Kim Darby) develops a crush on Capt Kirk.
(I looked it up, and it's not a popular subject for fic--this makes sense to me since it's kind of creepy--and not in an appealing way, even in the original episode.)
But no, it's mir-ific, as in miracle-making, like terrific--terror-making.
[The Grammarphobia Blog says, The evolution of “terrific” is an example of “amelioration,” a term for when a word’s meaning is changed for the better.]
Anyway, I don't know all the words intimately, but I could place them: Oxbridge English.
(And what's the proper name of this Latin-heavy English?)
BINGO:
Crispin's amateur detective, Gervase Fen, is an Oxford professor of English Language and Literature, and the novel was donated to the thrift store along with a copy of the 1963 ed. of The Clarendon Guide to Oxford.
Oh, wow! Just for fun, I pasted that entire vocabulary list into Google Search, and first thing up?
A PDF of Love Lies Bleeding:
http://detective.gumer.info/anto/crispin_2_2.doc
Reading the first page, I found it sickening––not the language, but the culture.
Here's a screencap from page 1:
Also just for fun, here's the English Reading List from Balliol College––the Oxford college of Dorothy Sayer's detective, Peter Wimsey.
(I just started rereading her Nine Tailors, but I'm not enjoying it.)
Scroll down the page for "things you should read before you come up to Oxford":
(What's the term for that phenomenon? I found culture language; speech communities; and languaculture.)
I don't know half the words on the list well enough to define them cold (out of context).
In my world, "mirific" looks like Miri-fic, that is, fan fiction about the Star Trek episode, "Miri", in which the young teenager Miri (Kim Darby) develops a crush on Capt Kirk.
(I looked it up, and it's not a popular subject for fic--this makes sense to me since it's kind of creepy--and not in an appealing way, even in the original episode.)
But no, it's mir-ific, as in miracle-making, like terrific--terror-making.
[The Grammarphobia Blog says, The evolution of “terrific” is an example of “amelioration,” a term for when a word’s meaning is changed for the better.]
Anyway, I don't know all the words intimately, but I could place them: Oxbridge English.
(And what's the proper name of this Latin-heavy English?)
BINGO:
Crispin's amateur detective, Gervase Fen, is an Oxford professor of English Language and Literature, and the novel was donated to the thrift store along with a copy of the 1963 ed. of The Clarendon Guide to Oxford.
Oh, wow! Just for fun, I pasted that entire vocabulary list into Google Search, and first thing up?
A PDF of Love Lies Bleeding:
http://detective.gumer.info/anto/crispin_2_2.doc
Reading the first page, I found it sickening––not the language, but the culture.
Here's a screencap from page 1:
Also just for fun, here's the English Reading List from Balliol College––the Oxford college of Dorothy Sayer's detective, Peter Wimsey.
(I just started rereading her Nine Tailors, but I'm not enjoying it.)
Scroll down the page for "things you should read before you come up to Oxford":
Ah the good old days ...”When children were working in coal mines, and life was a beautiful thing”
ReplyDelete-The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd
SPARKER: That's it. And women didn't mysteriously want to make a living...
ReplyDelete"Miri" is one of my favorite Star Trek episodes! (Even though I'm a "grup.")
ReplyDeleteI don't know about half of those words either. I swear I have never seen "acerbly" (related to acerbic, I'm guessing) or "prolegomenon" before. I think the others I have at least seen or heard, even if I'm fuzzy on some of the definitions.
STEVE: "Miri" IS a great episode, I agree! (I only meant I wouldn't want to ship Miri & Jim...)
ReplyDelete"NO BLAH BLAH BLAH!"
I've never seen "acerbly" either--you're right:
it is a synonym for "acerbically", yes--same Latin root as Acrid (bitter, sour).
"Prolegomenon" I've seen in Classics, but not elsewhere.
I despair!!! I will never get into Oxford! I have only read a fraction of the books I needed to read before I become an undergrad; and most of that fraction I did read, I read once I was over 30. Plus I hardly know what any of those words mean... most I have never heard or seen before...
ReplyDeleteNo wonder I have not been able to make anything of myself given my woefully inadequate education!