Favorite SRD vocabulary word?

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No other author has sent readers scurrying for the dictionary half as much as SRD. Which is your favorite of his 25-cent words?

percipience
2
13%
fug
1
6%
cataphract
1
6%
carious
1
6%
formication
2
13%
theurgy
1
6%
condign
0
No votes
attar
2
13%
puissance
5
31%
ichor
1
6%
 
Total votes: 16

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bossk
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Favorite SRD vocabulary word?

Post by bossk »

I love that SRD sends me running to the dictionary (or dictionary.com) so often. Of course, once he teaches you a word, he cements your new knowledge with repetition. Which of these words (or ones I've forgotten to mention) is your favorite?

I could only put in a few poll options, so the real fun will be adding in our "other" responses.
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Post by I'm Murrin »

Unhermeneuticable. I believe it was only used once, possibly in The Wounded Land, but I'm not certain. (I'm also pretty sure he made it up. Hermeneutics are a thing, but that word is not.)
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Post by aliantha »

I picked puissance, but I wished I could have picked them all. :D

Roynish is the word that sent me to buy an unabridged dictionary, back in the day. Now you can just Google any unfamiliar word. Perhaps the world is less than it was.... ;)
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Post by Frostheart Grueburn »

Mmm. When English isn't your native tongue, you end up not only running to dict.org every second second, but having some very intimate adventures with a thesaurus...

I don't favor the signature phrases, but the infrequent oddities..."caitiff cateran", "coistrel", "troth", "vlei", "geas" (which I learned from Terry Pratchett years before SRD :P), etc.
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Post by bossk »

aliantha wrote:I picked puissance, but I wished I could have picked them all. :D

Roynish is the word that sent me to buy an unabridged dictionary, back in the day. Now you can just Google any unfamiliar word. Perhaps the world is less than it was.... ;)
Oh, yes, roynish. That is one that slipped my mind from earlier installments. That one came up all the time.
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Post by Ananda »

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Post by Sorus »

I've always liked Percipience, but Fulminating was the first word that came to mind, so I'm going to stick with it.

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Post by zakyfarms »

Inchoate. Once I was attuned to it, it seemed to pop up on every other page.
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Post by lurch »

SRD certainly takes the usage of " lurch" up a notch or two in TLD. How cool is that? But ,,I am always floored by his find and use of a shakespearean word. In FR..he used " coign"..first used by the Bard in MacBeth. I am totally gak by his use of "Betimes.." here in TLD..yes friends and foes..there is such things as ..Betimes Macbeth...its a variety of tomato...
If she withdrew from exaltation, she would be forced to think- And every thought led to fear and contradictions; to dilemmas for which she was unprepared.
pg4 TLD
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Post by Cord Hurn »

I like "chiaroscuro", but it's not on this list. So, I voted for "puissance".
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Post by Shuram Gudatetris »

lurch wrote:SRD certainly takes the usage of " lurch" up a notch or two in TLD. How cool is that? But ,,I am always floored by his find and use of a shakespearean word. In FR..he used " coign"..first used by the Bard in MacBeth. I am totally gak by his use of "Betimes.." here in TLD..yes friends and foes..there is such things as ..Betimes Macbeth...its a variety of tomato...
He used coign in The Illearth War, too ;)

I love his prosetry.
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Post by Savor Dam »

While I don't have a copy of LFB here in the office, I am fairly sure "coign" appears there in the description of Revelstone's external appearance.
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Post by dlbpharmd »

Unambergrised.
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Post by Cord Hurn »

dlbpharmd wrote:Unambergrised.
That's a good one, too! :) :thumbsup:
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Post by Cord Hurn »

Savor Dam wrote:While I don't have a copy of LFB here in the office, I am fairly sure "coign" appears there in the description of Revelstone's external appearance.
A form of it appears, yes.
In [i]Lord Foul's Bane[/i] Chapter 12 was wrote:...The steepness of the climb made Foamfollower stumble several times, and he was barely strong enough to catch himself on the horses. But when he had labored up the ridge, he stopped, lifted up his head, spread his arms wide, and began to laugh. "There, my friend. Does that not answer you?" His voice was weak, but gay with refreshed joy.

Ahead over a few lower hills was Lord's Keep.

The sight caught Covenant by surprise, almost took his breath away. Revelstone was a masterwork. It stood in granite permanence like an enactment of eternity, a timeless achievement formed of mere lasting rock by some pure, supreme Giantish participation in skill.

Covenant agreed that Revelstone was too short a name for it.

The eastern edge of the plateau was finished by a broad shaft of rock, half as high as the plateau and separate from it except at the base, the first several hundred feet. This shaft had been hollowed into a tower which guarded the sole entrance to the Keep, and circles of windows rose up past the abutments to the fortified crown. But most of Lord's Keep was carved into the mountain gut-rock under the plateau.

For half a mile west from the tower, the entire cliff-face had been worked by the old Giants--sheered and crafted into a vertical outer wall for the city, which, Covenant later learned, filled the whole, wedge-shaped promontory of the plateau. The wall was intricately labored--lined and coigned and serried with regular and irregular groups of windows, balconies, buttresses--orieled and parapeted--wrought in a prolific and seemingly spontaneous multitude of details which appeared to be on the verge of crystallizing into a pattern. But light flashed and danced on the polished cliff-face, and the wealth of variation in the work overwhelmed Covenant's senses, so that he could not grasp whatever pattern might be there.

But with his new eyes he could see the thick, bustling, communal life of the city. It shone from behind the all as if the rock were almost translucent, almost lit from within like a chiaroscuro by the life-force of its thousands of inhabitants. The sight made the whole Keep swirl before him. Though he looked at it from a distance, and could encompass it all--Furl Falls roaring on one side and the expanse of the plains reclining on the other--he felt that the old Giants had outdone him. Here was a work worthy of pilgrimages, ordeals. He was not surprised to hear Foamfollower whisper like a vestal, "Ah, Revelstone! Lord's Keep! Here the Unhomed surpass their loss."

The Eoman responded in litany:

"Giant-troth Revelstone, ancient ward--
Heart and door of Earthfriend's main:
Preserve the true with Power's sword,
Thou ages-Keeper, Mountain-reign!"
I also note this passage marks SRD's first use of the word, "chiaroscuro", a word he would use repeatedly (and I'm not complaining about that) by the time he was writing the Last Chronicles.
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Post by aTOMiC »

I voted for "formication" as I tend to think of another, extremely similar word, when I read it.
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Post by wayfriend »

There were also "railed coigns" in the private Lords quarters. At intervals up the walls were railed coigns with doors behind them which provided access to the open space above the court.

I have no clue what Donaldson means by a coign here. It actually means "projecting corner".

This is a coign: Image

But I think Donaldson means something like this:

Image

As in "a projecting corner".

Coign also means "the keystone of an arch". 8O

(Bonus: a wedge-shaped die used for stamping metal was a 'coign'. And so we call our minted money "coins". Ask me where "dollar" comes from.)
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Post by DrPaul »

I recently posted on Facebook that I thought one of my friends was uxorious. I could have added that he was lost in the irrefragable fuligin of his exigent devoir.
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