Dotty Parker

eminent vocabulary

I've been reading Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey. It's a very smart book. I suppose I could become smart if I read it. And I am reading it. The names of people escape me, though. It's hard to describe historical figures as, "that crazy guy, with the religion, you know, he traveled and people didn't always like him."

Who doesn't that describe?

But it's smart for a number of reasons. Firstly, it's historical. That takes some smarts right there. Secondly, he writes in the style of the person he's profiling. For Cardinal Manning, he writes in a religious, over-the-top style. For General Gordon, an adventurer and, perhaps, martyr, he's quite regimented and factual. For Florence Nightingale, there's the feeling of a journal--someone who keeps track of things and is very, ah, concerned about how things are done. Finally, there's Dr. Arnold, a man who believed education was most valuable when loaded up with Greek verbs and sermons about morality and Christianity.

The third reason it's so smart is its vocabulary. I think my vocabulary is pretty good. (She says that having just written, "pretty good".) This book has, however, shown me how little I know and how annoying I could be if I tried just a little bit harder.

I write in the front of the book (in pencil, I swear) words that I don't know. That way I can look them up later and discover, "Oh! It was a fake word all along! What a kidder, that Lytton Strachey!" So here's the list thus far.

apotropaic adj : having the power to prevent evil or bad luck [WordNet]

obloquy Censorious speech; defamatory language; language that
casts contempt on men or their actions; blame; reprehension.
[1913 Webster]

Shall names that made your city the glory of the
earth be mentioned with obloquy and detraction?
--Addison.

effete adj : marked by excessive self-indulgence and moral decay; "a
decadent life of excessive money and no sense of
responsibility"; "a group of effete self-professed
intellectuals" [syn: {decadent}] [WordNet]

speciecoins collectively [WordNet]

Circassian n 1: a member of a Caucasian people living in the Caucasus but
not speaking an Indo-European language
2: a northern Caucasian language spoken by the Circassian
people [WordNet]

pullulate v 1: be teeming, be abuzz; "The garden was swarming with bees";
"The plaza is teeming with undercover policemen"; "her
mind pullulated with worries" [syn: {teem}, {swarm}]
2: move in large numbers; "people were pouring out of the
theater"; "beggars pullulated in the plaza" [syn: {pour},
{swarm}, {stream}, {teem}]
3: produce buds, branches, or germinate; "the potatoes
sprouted" [syn: {shoot}, {spud}, {germinate}, {bourgeon},
{burgeon forth}, {sprout}]
4: become abundant; increase rapidly
5: breed freely and abundantly [WordNet]

biretta A square cap worn by ecclesiastics of the Roman Catholic
Church. A cardinal's berretta is scarlet; that worn by other
clerics is black, except that a bishop's is lined with green.
[Also spelt {beretta}, {biretta}, etc.]
[1913 Webster]

contretemps An unexpected and untoward accident; something inopportune or
embarrassing; a hitch.
[1913 Webster]

I believe I should have known some of these words, but hey, sometimes a gal can't be all she might want to be.

Fourthly, Lytton can be a real punk. I'm sure that many of these people had outstanding traits that he plays down in order to take these historical figures down a peg or two, but this quote is a delight.

The Reformers must be exposed; the yoke of the secular power must be thrown off; dogma must be reinstated in its old preeminence; and Christians must be reminded of what they had apparently forgotten--the presence of the supernatural in daily life. "It would be a gain to this country," Keble observed, "were it vastly more superstitious, more bigoted, more gloomy, more fierce in its religion, that at present it shows itself to be."

How marvelous that Lytton's prose is so religious sounding! And how marvelous that the religious man who is quoted sounds like a big stink head!

I'm glad I can read good.

Posted by dotty at May 2, 2005 11:08 PM