Kevin's Watch

I agree - I thought it was used much more - in all of the books. Amazon purportedly scans the entire book.

Runes uses "theurgy" 12 times. I know Fatal Revenant must be close. I start groaning when characters—not just the narrator—use the word. Breaks up the reality for me.

SRD used "myriad" a lot in TIW.

The prologue to my novel will have "puissant" in it, just to tip the hat to SRD.

I generally get what the words mean even if I don't know what they mean. Know what I mean?

I see the problem. Puissant is used 5 times in Runes...

But Puissance is used 16 times!

AH! How silly of me not to check for the noun form!

Sunbaneglasses wrote:I generally get what the words mean even if I don't know what they mean. Know what I mean?

You may think you know what they mean. But you may not know what they mean.

Wayfriend wrote:

Sunbaneglasses wrote:I generally get what the words mean even if I don't know what they mean. Know what I mean?

You may think you know what they mean. But you may not know what they mean.

Do you have six fingers on your right hand?

Do you always start conversations this way?

She had become greater than her most flagrant expectations: as efficacious as a god, and as complete.

Um....what?

Auleliel wrote:Do you always start conversations this way?

I usually start them with some insult swordfighting.

Plash.
I thought it was a typo. I honestly thought it was a typo. But no. it's not.
You can 'plash' through a brook in Salva Gildenborne, I guess.
I think it would add a flavor to SRD's works if the language in the "real world" chapters were a bit blander, and the grander speech coming when they get to the Land. Kind of like the sepia to color reveal in The Wizard of Oz.
The other thought I had. I do see the point made here that it is sometimes difficult to track all these words down, in the prior workds it seemed to me that SRD sometimes fit the words in as adjectives or as one of a series of nouns where you can figure out from context what he is going for, even if you didn't know the exact word and didn't want to go for the dictionary.
And if you can't find it in even the Oxford lexicon, well, what does that say for working with your readers.
But I thought he used a lot of big words in Fatal, closer to the way he did in the earlier books. But Runes, I thought it just didn't work.
The whole "formication" chapter just had me annoyed. Used over and over and over again, and I thought, initially, it was a typo but contextually, fornication didn't fit. Contextually, seemed to be, possibly, a synonym for vitriol, but it's a bit more than that.
Despite it taking the years it has, and while this series remains as awesome in scope as the predecessors, it seems a bit rushed in spots.
This is where the editor sits SRD down and says, "Having consulted my dictionary, I know that 'plash' is a word, and it is used correctly in this sentence. But are your readers going to think it's an obscure word, or are they going to think that your editor is letting you down?"

Well, but wait a second...Formication is a good word, a quite appropriate word. How many words are there that describe the feeling of something crawling under your skin?

I guess I'm not understanding your issue with the word - did you ever look it up? From your post, it seems like you have no intention of finding out for sure what it is.

I have grown to enjoy these words, perhaps a bit much. I found myself saying to someone at work "oh, that would be a great boon for our department". I think I even referred to the union here as lacking "puissance" one day...

Yaah, I looked it up.
My problem was how the word was used, more than the word itself.
Formication this, formication that. Her whole reality became formication.
That one word played a bigger role in the chapter to me than any particular word has in a prior book.
It seems to me he has in the past snuck the big words in, they are like spices in the sentences. But formication was the main course in that chapter.
(And in rereading Runes right now, I notice that he uses it right at or after the caesure strikes Kevin's Watch.

burgs wrote:....but I wouldn't want to send my readers scurrying for multiple dictionaries. Not everyone is going to want to hunt down all of the words.

I don't think I've ever looked a Donaldson word up.
At least half of his words are described by the text they are in...and the ones that aren't, I just more or less ignore.

If you haven't perused it already, you all should check out the offical thread called "Donaldson's Obscure Words" in the First and Second Chronilces Forum.

This link should get you there:

kevinswatch.ihugny.com/phpBB2/viewtopic ... highlight=

Way too much fun!!!