Official Discussion Forum for the works of Stephen R. Donaldson
https://kevinswatch.com/phpBB3/
*sniff* I use the term gibbous moon...peter wrote:How about a 'gibbous moon' - did anyone mention that yet? WTF is a gibbous moon (yeah - I know *what* a gibbous moon is but WTF talks like that now [he said while ATST congratulating SRD for having the balls to do so (in print form at least)]).
(case of Croyel Parenthases going on above - hope they all 'stack up'.)
So does Terry Pratchett!Orlion wrote:*sniff* I use the term gibbous moon...peter wrote:How about a 'gibbous moon' - did anyone mention that yet? WTF is a gibbous moon (yeah - I know *what* a gibbous moon is but WTF talks like that now [he said while ATST congratulating SRD for having the balls to do so (in print form at least)]).
(case of Croyel Parenthases going on above - hope they all 'stack up'.)
One of the more amusing quotes from the Tiffany books involved it; don't have it at hand but it went something along the lines of "The moon gibbous'ed through the half-moon in the outhouse door." Also picked up 'geas' and 'susurrus' from him long before even hearing about Donaldson.
I learned a lot of 'obscure' expressions from him, like 'geas', which again popped up in AATE. 
I wonder if SRD is a George Carlin fan. Long ago he used this trick that you reference in a skit about words, specifically with nonchalant. If someone can be nonchalant, doesn't the concept of chalance exist? If I remember it right Carlin asked pretty much that exact question.W.B. wrote:I think it's a different version of a word that is in the dictionary. When deploying his verbiage (great subject line, BTW), Donsldson often seems add or remove prefixes and/or suffexes to create an unusual or uncommon version of a more familiar word. So demnify is the prefix-less version of indemnify, which is "to save harmless; to secure against loss or damage; to insure" (Webster's unabridged). So to demnify would be to make something dangerous or unsafe. I guess it died out in common usage and fell out of dictionaries while its sibling, indemnify/indemnity, survived.
I love this stuff!!! I may have to change my name to The Eighth Word, or is that Wurd, or Weird....never mind.to quote Stephen R. Donaldson himself describing his use of the word: "But 'unambergrised'. A great word, which (if memory serves) I stole from Gerard Manley Hopkins. Think of it like this. Long ago, ambergris (noun) was sometimes used to prepare bodies for funerals; more literally, to counteract the stink of an unburied body until an appropriate funeral (a show of respect and love) could be arranged. Inventing a verb from the noun, 'to ambergris' denotes 'to prepare a body for a funeral.' By implication, therefore, the verb connotes treating something deceased or lost with love and respect. From there, it isn't hard to invent an adjective from the verb: e.g. 'Men wept over her ambergrised corpse.' And from *there*, it's a small step to the adjective 'unambergrised,' which means--drumroll, please--the opposite of 'ambergrised'. Which in turn brings us, through a series of connotations, to the unintended accuracy of asking, 'What the hell does "unambergrised" mean?'--'hell' having suddenly become appropriate to the discussion (via 'treating something deceased or lost with contempt and/or disregard'). (I hear carping in the background, but I choose to ignore it. )"
Heh, he did that a lot...one of my favorites "flammable, inflammable, non-inflamable.....for christ's sake, it either FLAMS or it DOESN'T!" or somesuch.The Eighth Ward wrote: Long ago he used this trick that you reference in a skit about words, specifically with nonchalant. If someone can be nonchalant, doesn't the concept of chalance exist?