Vocab Freaks, Feast and Frolic! (and hey...Kickstarter is a thing!)

Once again I'm between chapters (by heaven, this book...I'm pacing myself because it's so good) and so it's time to go through our past chapters and pick out all those pesky archaic words and dine sumptuously upon their definitions, derivations and the odd etymology.  It's quite a smorgasbord this time.

Before I get into that I really wanted to let everyone know that I have begun a Kickstarter for my beloved novel The Reliquary.  I apologize to those who are attached to me through other social media who may have been subject to my other postings.  We're at 3% in three days, which is fabulous.  We have only 27 more days to go.  Sadly, this project will only go forward if people like yourself choose to back it.  It is an all or nothing proposition.  Please give generously and you will get generously!  There are quite a few reward tiers available from 5$ to as high as 200$ which features super exclusive prizes.  There's a perfect fit for anyone who wants to help me in this creative endeavor.

To find out how Kickstarter works you can get that information HERE.
Click HERE for my actual Kickstarter page.

Regardless of how much or how little you are able to do, your support means everything to me.  I thank you in advance.  Even just hitting +1 and sharing this post with others is ever so appreciated.  I want as many people as possible to have a chance to read my novel and come to love the characters as much as I do.

Now!  On to the Vocab Freak's Frolic!

I do feast so well upon these old novels.  There are so many good words that we've forgotten or have no more "use" for.  Of the 27 words we'll be looking at today a mere 13 of the show up as worthy of inclusion in my word processor's dictionary.  You know you're a Vocab Freak when you find yourself delighted that you know a word your phone or word processor's dictionary doesn't.  :)

Sublunary:  Naturally, one expects the word to mean "beneath the moon".  However that doesn't quite fit.  It is derived from that Latin "sublunaris" which means "terrestrial".  Fair enough.  The definition is an "belonging to this world as contrasted with a better more spiritual one".

Negus:  I was rather interested in this word, given my culinary arts background.  One of my other great delights, besides gaining a robust vocabulary, is finding old world drinks and foods that we've lost.  A negus was essentially mulled wine but that you swap the hot wine for hot port instead.

Pefidy: "deceitfullness; untrustworthiness"

Canzonette: "in music, a popular Italian secular vocal composition that originated around 1560"  One of which you can listen to HERE sung by a lady who appears to be taking it a tad too seriously while simultaneously seeming unimpressed.

Cachinnate:  According to the online dictionary, "It sounds exactly like what it is..." to which I thought, "an alien insectoid mating ritual?".  Of course I was wrong, but so was the online dictionary, in my opinion.  Continuing the quote, "it's what you do when you laugh loudly, guffaw, or cackle, and probably embarrass and annoy everyone around you."  Uh...huh.  Ca...chi..nnate...  I'll let my dear readers judge that one.

Physiognomy:  One of the great surprises in Jane Eyre, for myself at least, is how pervasive the pseudoscience of Phrenology is throughout.  Some bit of it is in just about every section of the novel.  Physiognomy is a companion pseudoscience that is "the supposed are of judging character from facial characteristics".  You see this in effect particularly in the "fortune telling gypsy" scene.

Choler: "one of the bodily humors, identified with bile, believed to be associated with a peevish or irascible temparment.

Blent: "past participle of blend"  Fair enough.  I should have expected that.

Averred: "to state or assert to be the case"

Adventitious:  "happening or carried on according to chance rather than design or inherent nature"

Ribald:  "referring to sexual matters in an amusingly rude or irreverent way".

Sententious: "given to moralizing in a pompous or affected manner"  And this usage didn't even come from the section with Brocklehurst in it.

Dentelles:  "ornamental tooling used in book binding, resembling lace edging"

Spoony:  "sentimentally or foolishly amorous"  Apparently my spooning with my wife is spoony behavior...fair enough.  :)

Sago:  "edible starch that is obtained from a palm and is a staple food in parts of the tropics..."

Abigails: "a lady's personal maid"

Minois Chiffone: (referencing Louisa) "attractive, but in an unusual way".  From further research I've found that it generally refers to an unevenesss of facial features.  This very imperfection, or multiple imperfections, are considered attractive...because of their asymmetry.  Interesting, I thought.

Saturnine: (descriptive of Miss Ingram) "dark and moody"

Contumelious:  "scornful and insulting; insolent"

Beldame:  "a malicious and ugly woman, especially an old one; a witch".  Beldame has got to be one of my favorite words in older language.  It's almost a mocking word because it come from the French "bel" which means beautiful and then the English "dame".  So it means literally "beautiful older woman" but is spun on its ear in usage.  I love fairy tales and fantasy stories that use the world "beldame" as a descriptor.  I think I first encountered it in Neil Gaiman's Coraline which was how the ghost children referred to the "other mother" with the black buttons for eyes.

Lassitude: "a state of physical or mental weariness; lack of energy"  To be a parent is to be in a constant state of lassitude.

Deglutition:  "the act or process of swallowing" Huh...

Badinage:  "humorous or witty conversation"  If you notice, I've added a little badinage to some of these definitions.  Let me know if you think it works better than just a list of words and definitions.  I kind of like it, but I'm not pertinacious about it.

Pertinacious:  "holding firm to an opinion or a course of action"

Seraglio:  "the women's apartments in an Ottoman palace"

Dudgeon:  "a feeling of offense or deep resentment"

Bathos:  "an effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous"

I hope you learned a few things.  I certainly did.

I'm hoping to have my next blog post, regarding the actual story contents of the book, by perhaps the end of the week.  I've gotten to the point where I am compelled to savor it.  I wanted them together, now I'm pissed they're apart, and can't wait for them to be reunited.  That moment of realization for Jane is going to have to be amazing.  I can't wait for it, but I want to draw it out a bit.  There should be two more entries before I finish this book and pick up Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird".

Don't forget to +1, subscribe, share and the like if you happen to enjoy my meager scribblings here.  I guess they aren't scribblings since I use a keyboard.  Would it be "my meager...key clackings"?

At any rate...I remain, faithfully,

W

You Keep Using That Word...

Before I get into this word that, with a wink to Inigo Montoya, does not mean what I think it means I wanted to say a brief thank you to those who have been reading.  The first post on my reading of Jane Eyre was the most popular by far, and I thank you.

Last night I was distracted off and on when my wife finally asked me why I kept checking my laptop.  I replied that I was checking my Blogger account.  She laughed at me giving me a look I know pretty well.  I contended that, no, I am not an "attention whore".  While the number of views were steadily going up was impressive I maintained that I was looking for comments.  I value comments very highly.  I crave interaction and the grinding of ideas upon other ideas.  If my commentary is way off base, or if there is another way to see what I've read, or even if I'm spot on then I want to hear about it.  I never think of myself as the be all end all authority...especially on something I've only just read and haven't ruminated on for at least a decade.  I am, thankfully, a perpetual student who is all to familiar with being dead wrong or half right in most instances.

All that to say to those who viewed at all, "Thank You" and to those who commented "Thank very much".  Many have +1'd which I greatly appreciate as well.  I'm very new to this whole Google Blogger process, however I very much recognize the value of every +1.  I thank you.  Also, if you look on the right by the picture of my son you can subscribe/follow and I'm sure every edition will make its way to you at least through Google+.

Now, as I was saying... Slattern

In talking about the Word Nerd side of my journey through the 100BYSRBYD I have to begin with slattern.  I've watched quite a lot of BBC films and shows.  In all my years of enjoying my severe Anglophilia I had always taken the word "slattern" to be spoken in the same manner and tone as "strumpet" and so have a similar meaning.  I used to just "absorb" meaning through examining the tone if spoken and through sentence context if read.  It was lazy, I know.  Part of the reason I'm doing the whole "Word Nerd" aspect is to correct such defects in my self-education.  I've even gone so far as to use the word "slattern" to a girl who was involved in "strumpety" (strumpish?) behavior because I knew she'd take it with a laugh.

So, when Jane arrives in Lowood and they start throwing around the term "strumpet" for children I was understandably shocked and confused.  Inigo Montoya immediately popped into mind and I was committed to not being Vizzini.  I looked it up in the dictionary.  Alright, an online dictionary, but I did go the extra mile to use the OED.  By heaven I'd love to have a hard copy of the full OED.  That's Hardcore OG Word Nerd right there.

Slattern: (noun) dated A dirty, untidy woman.

Fair enough.

It's only when we Americans get ahold of the word that we make it mean slut/prostitute.  We make everything dirty, apparently.  A nation of slatterns...in the original sense...although there may be an argument made...never mind.

Oddly this is a far more "cerebral" book than Pride and Prejudice but somehow I'm finding less words per page that I am unfamiliar with.  Now it is time to...

Define all the words!

Caviller:  One who raises irritating and trivial objections

Bilious:  1. Affected by or associated with nausea or vomiting  2. Spiteful; bad tempered

Captious:  Tending to find fault or raise petty objections.

Opprobium:  Harsh criticism or censure

Fagging:  To work or run errands for a senior pupil.

Convulvulus:  A twining plant with trumpet shaped flowers (includes Morning Glories)

Execration:  The act of cursing or denouncing

Parterre:  A level space in a garden or yard occupied by an ornamental arrangement of flower beds.

Pelisse:  A woman's cloak with arm holes or sleeves, reaching to the ankles.

Rushlight:  A candle made by dipping the pith of a rush in tallow.

Inanition:  Lack of mental or spiritual vigor and enthusiasm or exhaustion cause by a lack of nutrition

Animadversion:  Criticism or censure.

Meed:  A deserved share or reward.

Expostulation:  An expression of protest.

Assiduity:  Close or constant attention to what one is doing.

Chilblain:  A painful, itching swelling on the skin, typically on the hand or foot, caused by poor circulation in the skin when exposed to the cold.

Exigency:  And urgent need or demand

Hebdomadal:  Weekly.  (LOVE this unnecessarily long word for something so simple.)

Perfidious:  Deceitful and untrustworthy.  

Tucker:  A piece of lace or linen worn in or around the top of a bodice or as an insert at the front of a low cut dress.

Excrescence:  A distinct outgrowth on a human or animal body or on a plant, especially one that is the result of a disease or abnormality.

Organ of Veneration:  A phrenology term that denotes piety and saintliness.

Fervid:  Intensely enthusiastic or passionate, especially to an excessive degree.

Barmecide:  Illusory or imaginary and therefore disappointing.

The only other thing I wanted to mention on the "Word Nerd" front was....by heaven she likes semicolons and colons.  I've never seen the like in any other I've ever read.  I had to remind myself how to process them by reading the sentences out loud, much to the confusion of my three year old son.

Pax,

W

Primus Tertius (or..the First Third)..of Pride and Prejudice.

My wife was amazed at how much I am enjoying Pride and Prejudice.  "I don't know", she replied when pressed as to the source of this amazement.  "It just doesn't seem like a YOU book."
In the interest of full disclosure my wife, upon first reading many years ago, disliked the book.  While traveling for a summer in England during college one of her travel companions (a Lit Chick to the fullest measure, I am told) was aghast at the realization that my wife and never read Jane Austen or either of the Bronte sisters.  She read multiple works by the three and found Pride and Prejudice to be her least favorite of the three.  "Elizabeth just seemed dumb and floofy", she continued.

I have to admit that at first glance Elizabeth does seem pretty "dumb and floofy", but I'm getting ahead of myself here.

I walked into this novel with half-baked preconceptions (I'd use the word "prejudices" but I don't want to seem too clever) and enough culturally absorbed reference points to fill a snuff box.  For the first few chapters I was laughing out loud enough to make my son wonder what was going on and my daughter to scold me for interrupting her schoolwork.  So far the wit of this novel is the most enjoyable part.

Mr. Bennet has to be my favorite character with Mr.  Darcy being a close second.  If you know me personally I doubt that you are shocked by this.  My first instinct is to believe it is because they are two of the few prominent male characters, but I think it goes a bit deeper than that.

I feel that in my life I have one foot in each of the characters.  Both are caught in a society whose games they only wish to play as minimally as necessary, and are not ones to suffer fools.

Darcy is the younger man with years ahead of him and obviously deeply wounded, but not one to mope about it...though I was one to mope about it and write horrible poetry...  I love that his trust and opinion of a person, once violated or earned, is extremely difficult to shift.  His biting wit and double meanings of phrases delights me to no end.  I know he seems rude, but if I was at a party he'd be the one I'd want to meet and get to know.

Mr. Bennet (who in my mind I see as Tom Wilkinson and was surprised he never played.  Real tragedy.  He'd be perfect.) I relate to as a father.  I love his minimal nonsense outlook on life.  I'm sure he adores Mrs. Bennet despite the fact that he calls her on her ridiculous points.  I feel the most for him after reading about the entail.  Five daughters and once Mr. Bennet dies there is no way to provide for them or his wife.  It is honorable that he doesn't complain, openly, about the situation.  Were I in that situation I'd be trying to marry my daughters off to anyone who would have them because it is, in fact, a fairly desperate circumstance.  He'd be right to have that disposition, but instead he takes time and care.  Possibly my favorite exchange is after Elizabeth's refusal to the proposal of Mr. Collins,

"An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth.  From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. -Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do."

I love that Father's heart that still, in desperate circumstances, wants what is best or his daughter even if it means destitution in the future.

They are both fairly grumpy but capable of great love and so I see them as very similar sides of the same coin...and one I quite like and find in myself.

Mr. Bingley is pretty much an non-entity to me so far.  He's there.  Jane likes him.  Everyone likes him.  Meh.  Bingley's sister is a bit of a snake.  Wickham is clearly the Hugh Grant character of Bridget Jones' Diary.

And that is rather the problem.  So much of it I wonder if I'd feel the same if it wasn't for all the cultural osmosis I've involuntarily ingested over the year.  That's not to say that I'm not enjoying it.  I certainly am and plowing through it at twice my normal rate, looking for spare minutes and a dedicated hour if I can manage it to sneak away to read.  I do wonder if that cultural osmosis has tainted my opinion of Elizabeth, because right now I agree with my wife.  She's pretty dumb.  But then again, given the title, maybe that is the author's intent.  She IS perfectly situated in temperament between the level headed and prudent Jane and her two younger sisters, the flighty and crush obsessed Catherine and Lydia.  I find myself hoping that we get some more situations with the youngest, the book worm Mary.

My wife delighted me the other day when she told me she got Pride and Prejudice on audiobook for her commutes.  I have loved it when, in the past, we happen to be reading the same book.  We have some of the best conversations of our married life during those times.  Especially during Atlas Shrugged.  Those were pretty epic sessions.  She did caution me not to get too used to it since she'll certainly not be walking into War and Peace with me.  That's fair, says I.  I'm a little scared of Tolstoy myself.  Pretty sure I'm going to need a wall chart to keep and a "Cliff's Notes" on that one.

I left our young heroines (see...I can't really call Elizabeth a heroine...sigh...maybe my opinion will change) at the end of Chapter 21 where Jane relates to Lizzy the contents of a letter from the young Miss Bingley that indicates the party has left Netherfield and is not likely to return...at which point Mr. Bingley might be engaged to...Darcy's SISTER!  (*dun dun dunnnn*)

(Seriously...with a location name like Netherfield...Austen was kind of asking for a novel Zombification.  Just sayin'.)

I was truly delighted that quite a number of times this novel sent me running for my Webster's Dictionary.  I'm a big word nerd (I've been known to read the dictionary for fun...and laugh while reading it due to a particularly ingenious etymology) so that was quite a treat.

Ductile: Maleable.
Panegyric: A public speech or published text in praise of someone or something.
Laconic: Using very few words
Asperity:  Harshness in tone or manner
Eclat:  Brilliant display or effect
Hauteur:  Haugtiness of manner; disdainful pride
Probity:  The quality of having strong moral principles; honesty and decency.

Also I discovered for the first time "&c." at the end of one of the letters.  I had never seen that before in all my life and delved into my book of "style" and found that it is one of two abbreviations for Et Cetera.

When the couples were described as "at loo" during one of the evenings Jane was ill at Netherfield I knew I had to be missing something.  As an Anglophile and adorer of all things BBC related my only reference for the word "loo" was the lavatory, the water closet, the toilet.  I knew that couldn't be it.  Apparently "Loo" was a card game in which people gambled for money.  Another game discussed was "Vignt Un" (Twenty One in French) which we know today as Blackjack.  "Piquet" is similar to Spades or Hearts but played with a deck of 32 cards instead, and "Whist" is one of the root games that spawned what retired women the world over know as Bridge.  Apparently "Whist" was one of those "minute to learn, lifetime to master" sort of games.  Personally, I love old games like this (seriously.  I bought a game called "Funny Bones" primarily because of it's historical legacy as a game played by Romans using knuckle bones) and I may have to see about digging up the ancient rules for it.  Also I did some digging and found that the "quadrille" they dance during the ball at Netherfield (that was a "dance of mortification" for Lizzy due to Mr. Collins) is from whence we get Square Dancing here in the good ol' U S of A.

All in all it's been a great read.  The whit and the subtle and overt biting comments back and forth are what really keep me going back to the book.

See you all at the next third of the novel.

Yours,

&c.