dungeonable
adj. malicious, damnable; devilish
In a Word
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In a Word
paracosm
n. a detailed imaginary world, especially one created by a child
When English curate Patrick Brontë brought home a box of wooden soldiers in June 1829, his 12-year-old son Branwell shared them with his sisters. “This is the Duke of Wellington! It shall be mine!” cried 13-year-old Charlotte, and 11-year-old Emily and 9-year-old Anne took up heroes of their own. In the children’s shared imagination, the “Young Men” traveled to the west coast of Africa; settled there after a war with the indigenous Ashantee tribes; elected Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, as their leader; and founded the Great Glass Town at the delta of the River Niger.
After 1831 Emily and Ann “seceded” to create a separate imaginary country, Gondal, and after 1834 Charlotte and Branwell developed Glass Town into yet another imaginary nation, Angria. In various combinations the four edited magazines, wrote histories, and composed stories, poems, and plays about these shared fantasy worlds, with alliances, feuds, and love affairs that play out across Africa and the Pacific.
These writings eventually filled 484 pages before maturing interests inevitably sent the Brontës in different directions, but this early work helped to shape the themes and styles of their later poems and novels.
In a Word
poecilonym
n. a synonym for synonym
In a Word
epigon
n. one of a later generation
If we decide today that the world would be better off with a smaller population, and take steps to bring this about, then we’re denying life to future people who would otherwise have existed. Is this wrong?
“This difficulty is obvious when we ask, ‘For whom would it be better to have a larger or a smaller population?'” write philosophers Axel Gosseries and Lukas H. Meyer. “For someone whose very existence is contingent on the demographic decision at stake, how can we possibly say that a larger population or a smaller one would, ceteris paribus, be better?”
(Axel Gosseries and Lukas H. Meyer, eds., Intergenerational Justice, 2009.)
In a Word
scrutator
n. a person who investigates
callid
adj. cunning or crafty
potpanion
n. a drinking companion
nocent
adj. guilty
In “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange,” a bottle of wine is two-thirds full and then half empty, without explanation.
In The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Leslie S. Klinger writes, “Perhaps Holmes poured some wine off to conduct an actual experiment, instead of simply imagining the result.” Or perhaps Holmes and Watson drank it themselves.
In a Word
telepheme
n. a telephone message
telelogue
n. a conversation on the telephone
In a Word
velitation
n. a minor dispute or contest
devel
v. to beat or thrash
herile
adj. pertaining to a master
satisdiction
n. saying enough
Somebody once asked pool hustler Don Willis how good Glen “Eufaula Kid” Womack was.
Willis said, “I never saw him play.”
“What do you mean, you never saw him play? I heard you just beat him out of a lot of money.”
“I did,” Willis said, “but he never got to shoot.”
(From Robert Byrne’s Wonderful World of Pool and Billiards, 1996.)
In a Word
invious
adj. having no roads; trackless
In a Word
I’ve mentioned this elsewhere, but I hadn’t realized the source was known: In 1844, British general Sir Charles Napier was criticized in Parliament for his ruthless campaign to take the Indian province of Sind. On hearing this, 16-year-old schoolgirl Catherine Winkworth “remarked to her teacher that Napier’s despatch to the Governor General of India, after capturing Sind, should have been Peccavi (Latin for ‘I have sinned’).”
She sent this immortal pun to Punch, which unfortunately printed it as a factual report:
This mangled its meaning and credited Napier. Winkworth’s authorship was discovered only by later literary sleuths.
In a Word
orbity
n. a bereavement by loss of parents or children
reme
v. to cry out in grief or pain; to lament
philostorgy
n. parental love
asperous
adj. harsh to the feelings; bitter, cruel, severe
Of August Friedrich Schenck’s 1878 painting Anguish, one critic wrote in Figaro, “All the world today regards Schenk as one of our first animal-painters. He is one of those originals, of a species not yet extinct, who prefer dogs to men, and find more sweetness in sheep than in women.”
“It is a little drama, this picture, and as poignant as if it had men for actors and victims.”