When John Hollander claimed that English has no rhyme for bilge, George Starbuck imagined advancing on him, calling him a killjoy.
“No don’t!” Hollander cried. “I’m not a killj–“
Language
In a Word
gliff
n. an unexpected view of something that startles one; a sudden fear
irrision
n. the act of sneering or laughing derisively; mockery; derision
mortiferous
adj. bringing or producing death
proceleusmatic
adj. inciting, animating, or inspiring
Photographer Philippe Halsman took three hours to pose seven women in the shape of a skull for his surrealistic portrait In Voluptas Mors, after a sketch by Salvador Dalí, who’s seen in the foreground. Director Jonathan Demme borrowed the idea for the one-sheet poster for his 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs — the skull image on the “death’s head moth” is a miniature version of the same tableau.
Turns of Phrase
Erasmus’ 1512 rhetoric textbook Copia lists 195 variations on the sentence “Your letter delighted me greatly”:
Your brief note refreshed my spirits in no small measure.
I was in no small measure refreshed in spirit by your grace’s hand.
From your affectionate letter I received unbelievable pleasure.
Your pages engendered in me an unfamiliar delight.
I conceived a wonderful delight from your pages.
Your lines conveyed to me the greatest joy.
The greatest joy was brought to me by your lines.
We derived great delight from your excellency’s letter.
From my dear Faustus’ letter I derived much delight.
In these Faustine letters I found a wonderful kind of delectation.
At your words a delight of no ordinary kind came over me.
I was singularly delighted by your epistle.
To be sure your letter delighted my spirits!
Your brief missive flooded me with inexpressible Joy.
As a result of your letter, I was suffused by an unfamiliar gladness.
Your communication poured vials of joy on my head.
Your epistle afforded me no small delight.
The perusal of your letter charmed my mind with singular delight.
He followed this with 200 variations on the phrase “Always, as long as I live, I shall remember you.”
In a Word
argute
adj. sharp, as a taste
missment
n. a mistake, an error
mauvais quart d’heure
n. a short period of time which is embarrassing and unnerving
deligible
adj. worthy to be chosen
The label on Angostura bitters is larger than the bottle. When company founder Johann Siegert died, his sons planned to enter the tonic in a competition and divided the preparatory work between them. One oversaw the design of a new bottle, the other of a new label. They failed to coordinate the work, and by the time the mismatch was apparent they had no choice but to use the oversize labels. The oddity was so distinctive that it’s been retained as a branding measure.
(Thanks, Colin.)
In a Word
rarachose
adj. rare, unusual
selcouth
adj. extraordinary in appearance
cordate
adj. heart-shaped
trothplight
n. engagement to be married
The Croatian islet Galešnjak, in the Pašman Canal of the Adriatic Sea, is one of the few naturally occurring heart-shaped objects in the world.
It’s uninhabited, but the family that owns it provides facilities for engagements and weddings.
STOP
What’s the longest possible 10-word telegram? One wordplay enthusiast offered this try, at 198 letters:
ADMINISTRATOR-GENERAL’S COUNTERREVOLUTIONARY INTERCOMMUNICATIONS UNCIRCUMSTANTIATED. QUARTERMASTER-GENERAL’S DISPROPORTIONABLENESS CHARACTERISTICALLY CONTRADISTINGUISHED UNCONSTITUTIONALISTS’ INCOMPREHENSIBILITIES.
But in Language on Vacation (1965), Dmitri Borgmann observes that “we don’t like a message interrupted by two hyphens, three apostrophes, and a period.” He offered this:
PHILOSOPHICOPSYCHOLOGICAL TRANSUBSTANTIATIONALISTS, COUNTERPROPAGANDIZING HISTORICOCABBALISTICAL FLOCCIPAUCINIHILIPILIFICATIONS ANTHROPOMORPHOLOGICALLY, UNDENOMINATIONALIZED THEOLOGICOMETAPHYSICAL ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISMS HONORIFICABILITUDINITATIBUS.
It’s 45 letters longer.
Dead Letter
Last year Grant Maierhofer published Ebb, a novel written entirely without the letter A:
Ben went to school, worked in the Co-op, tried to write some but liked to be close with his friends. His friends comprised this kind of collective, this unity of spirit. Ben studied history. His friends studied too, some music, some writing, some science. They didn’t hope to extend their lives beyond this though, which left them odd. People who study, who hope to write, who hope to sing, who hope to push something through of their spirit, they often wish to flee, to go to New York, somewhere more, somewhere living, somewhere electric. These friends though they’d decided to let this be enough, their little communion with themselves, their communion of the work, which Ben enjoyed endlessly.
To describe the project, he wrote a thousand-word essay, itself without the letter A:
Why write the book? Good question. Possibly to try something out. To see where something brings you, then the things beyond this something. People write things. Sure, of course they do. People write things frequently. I write things, hm, since I like to figure the writing out. I bring problems on myself, then figure some route out of the box. The box? Stupid. Out of the box, outside the box? So stupid. Then how would you put it? The problem could be this cell, this thing you built surrounding your work. The problem could be the cell, then your working through it could be the tunneling out. This is nice. This is the thing, sure.
The essay and a longer excerpt are here. See The Void, The Great Gadsby, and Dead Letters.
In a Word
monoxylous
adj. made out of a single trunk or piece of timber
For this 2011 work, Italian artist Giuseppe Penone carved away the successive growth rings of a fir tree, revealing the sapling of its early days.
“My artwork shows, with the language of sculpture, the essence of matter and tries to reveal with the work, the hidden life within.”
Misc
- Fletcher Christian’s first son was named Thursday October Christian.
- SLICES OF BREAD = DESCRIBES LOAF (Dean Mayer)
- 16384 = 163 × (8 – 4)
- Of the 46 U.S. presidents to date, 16 have had no middle name.
- “It is ill arguing against the use of anything from its abuse.” — Elizabeth I, in Walter Scott’s Kenilworth
Star Trek costume designer William Ware Theiss offered the Theiss Theory of Titillation: “The degree to which a costume is considered sexy is directly proportional to how accident-prone it appears to be.”
(Thanks, Michael.)
In a Word
daymark
n. a mark to help navigators to find their way
nimbiferous
adj. bringing storms or showers
kenspeckle
adj. easily recognizable, conspicuous
onymous
adj. having a name
During World War II, pilots in northern Australia noted that an enormous thunderstorm formed daily between September and March on the Tiwi Islands in the Northern Territory. Regularly reaching heights of 20 kilometers, “Hector the Convector” is one of the world’s largest thunderstorms, an object of concentrated study by meteorologists, and a relative oddity — a cloud with a name.