Uncommon and unusual words

Continuing a thread of uncommon and unusual words encountered in reading or cataloguing.

Where that original thread has gone, and even whether it was in the Green Dragon, is anyone's guess.

Two for the price of one in the first words of Forrest Reid, Illustrators of the eighteen sixties : an illustrated survey of the work of 58 British artists:

"Having grouped the following notes and divagations under the general title of Illustrators of the Sixties, I must explain that the word 'Sixties' has been used here to describe a movement rather than a decade." (Chapter I. Prolegomena).

Divagation. deviation, digression, 1550s, from Latin divagatus, past participle of divagari "to wander about," from dis (apart) + vagari (to wander, ramble). Compare vagrant.

Prolegomena. prefatory remarks; specifically a formal essay or critical discussion serving to introduce and interpret an extended work.

I don't know if this is uncommon or unusual, but it's the first time I've come across it, enislement to isolate or set apart. It doesn't come up when Googled, although when I insisted the search for the word I spelled it did give me enisle. The author (M.F.K. Fisher) used it to describe the subtle, but well mannered exclusion of her Episcopalian family from the Quaker neighborhood.

>3 MrsLee:
Is it derived from a notion of making someone, or a group, an island/isle? The en-isle, with en-isle-ment being the process? Just a thought.

ETA: I just Googled "enisle" and it gave me:
isolate on or as if on an island.
"in the sea of life enisled, we mortal millions live alone"

>4 pgmcc: Yes, I like the word. Said to an enemy; "I will enisle you!" That is the more merciful threat than annihilate you. ;)

>5 MrsLee:
I can hear the polite daleks screaming, "You will be enisleated!" "Enisleate! Enisleate! Enisleate!"

>6 pgmcc: :D

>6 pgmcc: LOLOL!

This week I learned scranbag, from Miss Pym Disposes. Which was, apparently in this case, a meal of assembled leftovers. (But usually meant a bag for holding scraps of food.)

Today I learned that cutting toast into soldiers means into long strips. That one is from The Chalk Pit.

>8 clamairy:
Yes, toast was cut into soldiers so they could be dipped into soft boiled egg and eaten.

E.T.A.:

>9 pgmcc: Yum!

That picture makes me want a soft boiled egg. It has been too long since I ate one.

It has been months and months since I've dropped in to add a book, or look for a conversation. But I'd like to say, I'll start hanging out here more soon.

I first heard of cutting toast into soldiers from one of Terry Pratchett's books. Night Watch, I think? I had to go look it up because my mind was presenting me with the little string of paper dolls you cut out of a single folded sheet of paper, except with little old fashioned soldier-y hats and rifles. Which obviously wouldn't work, but it made me laugh :)

>12 antqueen: I also wondered at first if the bread slices were trimmed into people shapes, and then toasted!

>8 clamairy: Do I detect yet another concept to be filed under "two nations divided by a common language"? Having been brought up in the "Empah", I'm sure I was introduced to toast cut into soldiers at my mother's knee before I was four! I suspect that Haydninvienna could say the same, but more so.

>14 hfglen: I do say the same!

Toast is often cut into points here. So you end up with four triangles. That is also excellent for yolk dipping. Though I can see how the soldiers would work well if the soft boiled eggs were kept in the shell.

>14 hfglen: I've heard the term soldiers on cooking shows here, though it isn't common.

>14 hfglen: I suspect it might depend on the part of the country one is raised in here, and whether one's parents were anglophiles or not. I never heard the term soldiers until I was reading British murder mysteries, then I think someone here explained the term to me. As clamairy said, we had what we called triangles.

>16 clamairy: My mother did! And now I need somebody to correct my knowledge of The Classics, and Gulliver's Travels in particular. Wasn't it the Brobdignagians who had a civil war about whether to open a boiled egg at the broad or narrow end? (Prior to dipping toast soldiers into the runny yolk, of course.)

>19 hfglen: The war was between Lilliput and Blefuscu.

Triangles are for tiny sandwiches. They couldn't possibly get deep enough to get all the yolk out of the egg. Besides, you need to line up your soldiers before you send them one by one to their glorious yolky heroic deaths.

I had thought that the Commonwealth was an anachronistic waste of space. Now i realise that it had but one invaluable service to render mankind: toast soldiers.

>21 MrAndrew: ❤️

Not exactly a new word, but a new (to me) expression. Sea change. I was reading one of the essays in M.F.K. Fisher's book today and she mentioned it referring to the different behavior of men and women while they were at sea. I thought it was a phrase she worked up.

A bit later today, I'm reading The Sea Runners, and here it is again with the leader pondering his cohorts possible reactions when they have made their escape in a canoe.

Bizarre to come across it twice in one day in such different books. Apparently it comes from a line in The Tempest, when Ariel is singing of the change the sea has made on a body resting at the bottom of the ocean. Now it is used to infer that huge shifts in attitude must happen before great changes occur.

>23 MrsLee:
I have found the expression as fairly common usage here. Some one might describe a new situation as a bit of a sea change. It could relate to a change in management in an organisation, or, as you say, a change in attitude in a population. It is, of course, a metaphor based on a change in weather conditions at sea, the implication being the people affected have to be alert to what is happening around them to be able to navigate their way through.

A radical change in government policy could be called a sea change.

>23 MrsLee: & >24 pgmcc: I've heard and read it a fair amount, too. And isn't it part of the lyrics of some famous song?

It has been a very common expression in the media here for some time, specifically relating to people who move from the city to smaller seaside towns for lifestyle reasons. It has been pretty much superseded since the pandemic lockdowns by tree change, referring to city people who move to regional areas for lifestyle reasons (mostly because the real estate in the seaside towns had become prohibitively expensive).

It was also the name of a very popular local TV show in 1998, about a woman who, well, moves to a seaside town.

Not sure which song your thinking of, but Stevie Nicks did sing "the sea changes colour but the sea does not change", which i think is accurate.

>26 MrAndrew: I think this song predates Fleetwood Mac. I tried to use Google, but there are over 10,000 lyrics containing the term 'sea change.'

I guess it took seeing "sea change" twice in one day in two different books to make me pay attention to it. Interesting that in both the references in my books used it to refer to the change in personality which comes over a man or woman when they are on a vessel in the middle of an ocean, or at the mercy of the ocean. That seems more apt than many of the modern usages.

>28 MrsLee: It doesn't take much time for words or expectations to shift meaning these days.

Just occurred to me to search LT for books whose title is or includes “sea change”. I got 937 “editions”. One of them, Sea Change by Richard Armstrong, was one of my set books in grade 8 at school.

>26 MrAndrew: >27 clamairy: The song is 'Edge of Seventeen'.

"The clouds never expect it when it rains
But the sea changes colours
But the sea does not change
So with the slow, graceful flow of age
I went forth with an age old desire to please
On the edge of seventeen"

Another Soldier fan here, from early age. Surprised to find it as one of the terms not common over the pond.

Stephen donaldson is the usual suspect when looking for unusual words of very specific meaning. Eidetic was the first time I'd had to look-up a word in a novel - meaning near perfect recall.

Oh, i'd forgotten eidetic. Strange.

It seems that the expression sea change has undergone a... you know.

>32 reading_fox:
I had friends who, when I used the term “photographic memory”, would correct me and say, “What you mean is an eidetic memory”. Note the use of the word, “had”.
:-)

My new word this week is logomachy , encountered in a Michael Innis novel. It means an argument about words.

I don't think I had ever known that the phrase "sea change" had to do with what happens to people on long voyages. One wonders how much of it is the underlying cause of "shipboard romances".

I ran into 'supererogatory' in Guns of August. Not sure I'd ever seen that one before.

"Thews" From Conan Stories. Muscles, I believe the word is referring to.

I'm currently reading The Mountain in the Sea and finding it to be challenging, speculative science fiction. The first word I encountered where I wondered if the author had made up the vocabulary was exapt a biological term which is defined as "a verb that means to repurpose a pre-existing function or adaptation".

The second word with which I was unfamiliar was qualia, "the qualities or feelings that make up our subjective experiences".

Eric Rosenthal (of blessed memory) describes a Johannesburg old-timer in Shovel and Sieve as wearing a puggaree around his hat. The omniscient Google tells me this was a lightweight scarf that could be used as a hatband or lowered as sun-protection for the back of the neck.

>39 hfglen: This page has quite a bit of info about the puggaree worn on the Australian Army's felt hat.

From another board ~ Petrichor. It's that earthy smell produced when rain falls on dry soil.

I first encountered "tatterdemalion" (a person in tattered clothing) in the DC comic "Ragman: The Tattered Tatterdemalion of Justice". I liked it so much, I used it in my own writing. I was then pleased to see it turn up in Richard Raley's "The Foul Mouth and the Cat-Killing Coyotes."

Having inherited an interest in reading Rudyard Kipling from my father, I recall needing to look up a number of words, for some of which I failed to find a satisfactory definition. One that did have a result (and that comes to mind) was "pilchard" from "Stalky & Co." A moment's thought might have made the connection to "chard," which I knew was a type of fish. But the "this side of the pond" term might be "sardine."

>41 UncleMort: I don't remember what I was reading, but I do remember that the first time I saw the word petrichor I was delighted that there was really, truly a word for that. I still smell it every time I see it.

>42 stuartperegrine: To me a pilchard is an adult Portuguese-sardine, which is a different species from a Brisling sardine, which is a baby herring. Here pilchards come in round 410-gram cans and tend to be, er, aromatic (not in a good way) when the can is opened -- and that's before they go off!

>42 stuartperegrine: For me as a child, here in the UK, pilchards came in tins in a tomato sauce (e.g. https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/254863672 ). It was the stereotypical Saturday tea, with bread and salad (then basically lettuce, cucumber and tomato, with perhaps radish or celery), watching the professional wrestling and the football results, before Dr Who came on.

Edited to tweak the URL.

>45 Cynfelyn: Sorry pardon, but that link gave me an error 404. This one might work, though.

>46 hfglen: My bad. The closing bracket got attached to the URL.

>47 Cynfelyn: Ah! It now works. I'd be curious to know where yours is packed, as I have an idea that here both brands come out of the same factory, which is physically located in Saldanha Bay next to the harbour.

Encountered the word tantalus in of all places Agatha Christie's Murcer on the Links. It's a carrying tray for bottles with a little wooden piece on the top with holes that fit around the neck of those bottles to steady them in the carrier.

>49 jillmwo: As seen in all Victorian house museums here. The bottles (normally 3 of them) are usually square in cross section, and made of cut glass. The contents are indicated by engraved silver tags on chains around the necks. IIRC there's a piece in one of the Discworld books where, in order to confuse the servants, the tags were spelt backwards: Nig, Ydnarb and Yksihw (sorry, Pete!). He observes that the servants may well see to it that at least one of the bottles is topped up with Eniru.

>50 hfglen: I had seen the decanters you describe; I know my parents had some of that description, including the little tag necklaces (not sure they were engraved silver but certainly not spelled backwards). What I was unfamiliar with was the "tray" in which they were supposed to reside. Christie only mentions that the tray was sitting on a "rather handsome oaken sideboard".

>19 hfglen: If I recall correctly, that would be the Big-Endians and the Little-Endians.

"Petrichor" as in what most of us think of as the "smell of rain, especially following a warm dry spell." Encountered in the Incryptid series, by Seanan McGuire

I'm working my way through the Guardian's backlog of literary top ten columns. Today's, from 2011-07-27, is Lil Chase's top 10 unwords:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/341768#8267752

>54 Cynfelyn: I liked the blurb on 'phonies'. Also, if Heffalump in the list, shouldn't it also include Woozle?

>38 jillmwo: I just finished The Mountain in the Sea a couple of days ago. Great book! I too had to stop and look up exapt.

Now I am reading Ruthanna Emry's Deep Roots and stumbled upon another new-to-me word: prosody...

1. the patterns of rhythm and sound used in poetry.
2. The patterns of stress and intonation in a language.

Another new word (to me at least), again from the Guardian's backlog of literary top tens, this time of top 10 siblings' stories, 2012-02-15:

pandar

"From Chaucer's character Pandare (in Troilus and Criseyde), from Italian Pandaro (found in Boccaccio), from Latin Pandarus, from Ancient Greek Πάνδαρος (Pándaros). ... (obsolete) A person who furthers the illicit love affairs of others; a pimp or procurer, especially when male". (Wiktionary).

Used in relation to Mrs Penniman in Henry James, Washington Square, "pimp or procurer" sounds a bit harsh. I don't know, but I imagine, like the narrator in L. P. Hartley, The go-between and its film adaptation, Mrs Penniman is more of a "furtherer" than a "procurer".

>57 Cynfelyn: Robert Graves, I, Claudius, uses pander several times, rather than pandar, for example, as the increasingly mad Caligula says to the increasingly nervous Claudius:

'She's your cousin Messalina, Barbatus's daughter. The old pander didn't utter a word of protest when I asked for her to be sent along to me. What cowards they are, after all, Claudius!'

The modern use of 'pandering' is a real weakening of the original meaning.

Subnivean.

>59 MrAndrew: Nice.

>59 MrAndrew: I didn't know that one either.

>59 MrAndrew: >60 clamairy: >62 jillmwo:

I thought it meant underneath the moisturising cream.

>63 pgmcc: It should probably mean this as well. Why not? LOL

>59 MrAndrew: Such a nice word!

From one of H C Bailey's short stories on Project Gutenberg, "The President of San Isidro": "[Mr Fortune] ... took out of his pocket a flat case like a housewife." (The "flat case" contains a set of lock-picking tools.) This looks like a rather weird error, but it isn't. In the British Army (then and perhaps now), soldiers were issued with a small sewing kit, called a "housewife", pronounced "huzzif". See here. For an Australian Army example see here.

Salience

The word is: Jouissance

Context (encountered in a marketing blurb on the back of a book): White salutes the perfectly useless jouissance of readerly absorption.

Frequently, the word is translated as "enjoyment" but from what I have gathered, it is supposed to mean a more intense experience -- pleasure near to the point of painful ecstasy.

>67 jillmwo:
Ouch!

Hurt me, baby!

>68 pgmcc: Let's keep the conversation within the bounds of community standards for decency and purity in here, please.

Sir Terry on his favourite word:

... if an oily surface made a noise it would go glisten. And bliss sounds like a soft meringue melting on a warm plate. But I'll plump for:
SUSURRATION
.. . from the Latin susurrus, whisper or rustling, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's a hushed noise. But it hints of plots and secrets and people turning to one another in surprise. It's the noise, in fact, made just after the sword is withdrawn from the stone and just before the cheering starts.

From "The Choice Word", in A Slip of the Keyboard, p 12.

>70 haydninvienna: That's a lovely quote! (And I agree, susurration is a great word.)

A word not unfamiliar to me, but it's been a long time since I heard it: tatterdemalion.

Used to describe the appearance of mountain men when once they made their way back to civilization. My grandma used to use it a lot to apologize for the way she was dressed when she came in from the garden in her bathrobe.

>72 MrsLee:
Why did your grandma bathe in the garden? Was she a bit of an exhibitionist?

>73 pgmcc: :D She would get out of bed, put her robe on, glance out the window and see something she wanted to investigate closer, go outside, see a weed that needed pulling, and two or three hours later realize that she should probably go in and get dressed. She loved her garden.

>74 MrsLee:
Is that her story or yours?
:-)

>75 pgmcc: I am a witness! :D I won't vouch for her when she was out camping though. There are written stories which suggest that would be unwise.

>76 MrsLee:
:-)

>76 MrsLee: You remind me of a late and much-missed lady botanist who used to take newly-arrived young colleagues up Table Mountain (Cape Town). At a certain point she used to direct them to go and look in a gorge for prize rarities while she went the other way, past a couple of "No Swimming in the Reservoir" signs and skinny-dip (at the age of 70+) in a dam that supplied the city below with drinking water.

The Oxford English Dictionary has announced (either yesterday or today) addition of 20+ Japanese vocabulary words to the OED. I thought these two paragraphs might be of particular interest here:

Also included in this update are two words for distinctively Japanese forms of entertainment: isekai and tokusatsu. Isekai is a Japanese genre of science or fantasy fiction featuring a protagonist who is transported to or reincarnated in a different, strange, or unfamiliar world. The word in Japanese was originally used in the literal sense of ‘other world’ in Haruka Takachiho’s novel Isekai no Yushi (The Warrior from the Other World), published in 1975. A recent cinematic example is Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli film The Boy and the Heron, which has recently won the Oscar, Golden Globe, and BAFTA awards for best animated feature film.

Tokusatsu is a genre of Japanese film or television entertainment characterized by the use of practical special effects, usually featuring giant monsters, transforming robots, and masked and costumed superheroes. The word is short for tokushu-satsuei, which literally means ‘special photography, special visual) effects’, a combination of tokushu- ‘special’ and + satsuei ‘action of photographing’, or in film, ‘shot, take’. Director Eiji Tsuburaya pioneered practical special effects techniques in the 1940s and 50s which were used in such classic tokusatsu films as Godzilla (1954), as well as in several tokusatsu television series. Later tokusatsu TV series of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s were popular both in Japan and internationally. An early example of the genre, Masked Rider, first aired in 1971 and remains an enduring TV favourite in Japan to this day.

For more see: https://www.oed.com/discover/words-from-the-land-of-the-rising-sun

>79 jillmwo: Cool! I like this piece of news. (I am quite tired of all the isekai anime series, though...)

Pembrokeshire Record Office, Recipes for your ancestors, includes recipes for snail water and swallow water (both 1698), and for orange water (18 cent.), including:

To make swallow water
Take 40 or 50 Swallows when they are ready to fly from their nest, bruise them to pap in a stone mortar feathers and all, then adde to it 2 ounces of Castoreum broken to powder, and 3 pints of strong white wine vinegar, mix all these very well together and still it in a Cold Still, you may draw from it a pint of very good water, more may be drawn but it will be weaker.

Sounds pretty grim. No idea what these 'waters' were used for. And "swallow water" is one of those word combinations that makes Googling impracticle. A 1671 snail water recipe online says:

"This Water is good against all Obstructions whatsoever. It cureth a Consumption and Dropsie, the stopping of the Stomach and Liver. It may be distilled with milk for weak people and children, with Harts-tongue and Elecampance."

Not an uncommon word, but as I am reading a book from the 1800s, I came across the word "sanguine." Earlier meanings could be "bloodthirsty" or "bloody" as in lots of blood, not the swear word. Most used now to mean a cheerful outlook on life. I read the history of how this meaning came about, but for fun have decided to apply the "bloodthirsty" meaning when I come across an author using it.

Washington Irving in Bracebridge Hall
"The volumes which I have already published have met with a reception far beyond my most sanguine expectations." So, did they cause a terrible war to break out? Perhaps only a murder or two because I'm not clear what his bloodthirsty expectations were. They might be small, but really I think more than one killing.

I've always thought of sanguine as chill, based on context. I like substituting bloodthirsty. We should do that for more words.

Unrelated:
Infusoria The War of the Worlds
Protozoa, amoeba, copepods, cyclops etc etc

>84 MrAndrew: So called because the Victorian way of harvesting them involved infusing hay in clean water.

Someone at my office posted this word for the day, which I thought was quite lovely:

Oubaitori (n), the idea that people, like flowers, bloom in their own time and in their individual ways.

>86 ludmillalotaria: I love this! Is it Japanese?

>87 Sakerfalcon: Yes, it is Japanese.

>85 hfglen: thanks Hugh! My cursory investigation didn't uncover that. I shared it with the workmate that originated the word, and he was suitably impressed. You're the Cyrano to my Christian (in a purely platonic relationship, d'accord!).

>86 ludmillalotaria: This is awesome.