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| Egon's looking a bit hidebound here, no? |
adjective
1) narrow and rigid in opinion; inflexible:
2) oriented toward or confined to the past; extremely conservative:
The Republi/Fascist Party is so hideously hidebound, so utterly doctrinaire that, before long they’ll be nothing more than fossils, displayed in a Museum of Antiquities.
It can also mean:
of a domestic animal : having a dry skin lacking in pliancy and adhering closely to the underlying fleshSanguine
adjective
1) marked by eager hopefulness : confidently optimistic
2) accompanied by, involving, or relating to bloodshed : bloody
from the numerous graves, including those by the barn, which our shells had destroyed; we realized what a sanguine battle it had been …— Frederick W. WildHOW can the word mean BOTH?
Merriam Webster comes to my etymological rescue:
During the Middle Ages, health and temperament were believed to be governed by the balance of different liquids, or humors, in one’s body.I am cautiously sanguine that our national horror show will soon be at an end.
~~~snip~~~
People who were calm, slow, undemonstrative, and unexcitable were thought to have an abundance of phlegm – they were governed by that humor and were therefore phlegmatic. Those who were bilious had a bad disposition because of the large amount of yellow or black bile in their system. But those lucky people who were governed by blood were strong, confident, and ruddy (all that blood, you know) – in a word, sanguine.
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| The formally lush White Mountains after Xeric's been at them |
adjective
of, relating to, or adapted to a dry environment.
Sounds more like an evil genius like Loki, Thanos, Galactus or Magneto. What's Xeric’s dastardly scheme? Sucking all the moisture out of the Earth in order to kill every living thing on it.
Omphaloskepsis
noun [om-fuh-loh-skep-sis] contemplation of one’s navel as part of a mystical exercise; navel-gazing.
The Amazing Bob always advised me to keep my writing simple. NOT simple minded but uncluttered by unnecessarily complex words. Those words may be oodles and pounds of fun BUT if you trip your reader up with flamboyantly byzantine language…well, reader go bye-bye.
Which scans better?
It was a navel-gazing kind of a day – spent staring at the waves, watching the tide roll in.If I was writing a letter to Hillel I would TOTES use omphaloskepsis because the word would delight and fascinate him (I think). It’d be like nonchalantly placing a sweet gooey slice of tiramisu in the middle of the sentence. It’d completely derail the tale of my navel-gazing day because OOO LOOK’IT THAT COOL WORD! WHERE’S IT COME FROM!? But that would be AOK.
It was an omphaloskepsis kind of a day – spent staring at the waves, watching the tide roll in.
The mostly tame Dvandva beast
Dvandva
noun
a compound word neither element of which is subordinate to the other, as bittersweet.I just like the way this one looks and feels when I say it and had to share.
Dvandva, literally meaning “a pair,” is a Sanskrit technical term used exclusively in grammar and linguistics.
Yur welcome!
"Phaloskepsis" would obviously mean skepticism about the size of Hair Furor Agolf Twitler's "shroom", fueled by the earlier observations of Stormy Daniels. Adding "om" at the beginning just makes it more -- ominous?
ReplyDeleteOH, the word's MUCH more useful now – THANKS!
ReplyDeleteYour damned right I would love a sentence sprinkled with a delightfully chewy word like omphaloskepsis. Makes the reading ever so much more fun and thoughtful. When I teach grant writing workshops, I urge people to use interesting language in their proposals, not by way of tripping up the reader, but to make said reader sit up and pay attention in the midst of slogging through umpteen similar sounding essays. Put a little life into your writing, I say.
ReplyDeleteYes, yes, YES! The trick is to keep the flow smooth – not, in our pursuit of fun, dazzling language, banjax the message.
ReplyDelete