Donaldson's Obscure Words - Official Thread
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- Lord Mhoram
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This is what I have for those words:
bourne - noun - 1. a brook or stream 2. [archaic] a limit; boundary 3. a destination; a goal 3. a domain (N.B. also spelled bourn)
bedizen - adjective - [now rare] to dress or decorate in a cheap, showy way ... so a cheap showy decoration for bed
vlei - noun - a Dutch word for marsh or wetland
I keep track of pretty much all their meanings, not just ones Donaldson uses, so for bourne for example, could be any one. I don't have a book/page number for a use of it, so I don't know.
bourne - noun - 1. a brook or stream 2. [archaic] a limit; boundary 3. a destination; a goal 3. a domain (N.B. also spelled bourn)
bedizen - adjective - [now rare] to dress or decorate in a cheap, showy way ... so a cheap showy decoration for bed
vlei - noun - a Dutch word for marsh or wetland
I keep track of pretty much all their meanings, not just ones Donaldson uses, so for bourne for example, could be any one. I don't have a book/page number for a use of it, so I don't know.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald
Stephen R. Donaldson Ate My Dictionary
-F. Scott Fitzgerald
Stephen R. Donaldson Ate My Dictionary
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In ordinary usage, the meanings are often distinguished by spelling: bourn for a stream, bourne for a border. No doubt this is because bourn is still used in a good many place-names, whereas bourne is rather poetic and archaic. Bourne would probably die out entirely were it not for the famous line from Hamlet: 'That undiscovered country from whose bourne / no traveller returns'.W.B. wrote:bourne - noun - 1. a brook or stream 2. [archaic] a limit; boundary 3. a destination; a goal 3. a domain (N.B. also spelled bourn)
In northern English and Scottish place-names, the word is often spelled burn. Cf. another famous line: 'Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire'.
(Off topic: In my own W.I.P. I have to break this rule, as I have a river called the Southbourne. This is an inadvertent pun, but one hardly worth the trouble of avoiding. Not only is it a bourn, it forms the southern border or bourne of the country in which it arises.)
The words bourne, bediezenings and vlei all appear in TOT when they visit the Elohim. I cannot give you page numbers but it is said that the Elohim turns the sky into a "bourne of bediezenings" and that one of them turn himself into something that looks like a vlei (that is a little earlier).
"Und wenn sie mich suchen, ich halte mich in der Nähe des Wahnsinns auf." Bernd das Brot
In regards to preterite again. Pynchon definitely uses it as a noun to describe the people of society that have been passed over. "The preterite"
Chcek out the Pynchon website on Spermitikos Logos for some very interesting stuff.
Pynchon should be a necessary read for all you Donaldson fans.
Imagine a fantasy novel set in the reality of the end of WWII and with ridiculously obcscure references and bizzare characters.
It is not for no reason that Gravity's Rainbow is regarded as the most unread book in history (after Ulyssess of course).
Chcek out the Pynchon website on Spermitikos Logos for some very interesting stuff.
Pynchon should be a necessary read for all you Donaldson fans.
Imagine a fantasy novel set in the reality of the end of WWII and with ridiculously obcscure references and bizzare characters.
It is not for no reason that Gravity's Rainbow is regarded as the most unread book in history (after Ulyssess of course).
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- Landwaster
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Ok I just added guerson, vlei, bourne and bedizen, and added W.B.'s page as a reference.
Would still like a bit of volunteer work from the troops to take a letter each and convert some of W.B.'s entries to this format for integration. Would take some of the sting out of the workload.
Would still like a bit of volunteer work from the troops to take a letter each and convert some of W.B.'s entries to this format for integration. Would take some of the sting out of the workload.
Do you think I like being this dangerous?
That would depend on your definition of obscure. The wore does exist in norwegian and it is used, but only very rarely. So how would you define a word as obscure?Landwaster wrote:Not really an obscure word, though, is it?Ryzel wrote:I think we should include "bane" in the list too.
"Und wenn sie mich suchen, ich halte mich in der Nähe des Wahnsinns auf." Bernd das Brot
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Eh, it's pretty common in English. Something being "the bane of my existence" is pretty much a cliche.
"It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past. Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement against that past.”
-George Steiner
-George Steiner
Does anyone know more exactly where "cerclean" is in TWL (chapter, the beginning words of its paragraph)? The editions I have (U.S. paperbacks) must have differet paginations, since I can't find it on that page. I also couldn't find it on a text file of the novel that I found online (what a great resource!), so perhaps it's misspelled.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald
Stephen R. Donaldson Ate My Dictionary
-F. Scott Fitzgerald
Stephen R. Donaldson Ate My Dictionary
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