"The air was filled with the smell of hot dogs and the tinny sound of Christmas carols and Bing Crosby roasting chestnuts. I could hear my dad's braw tenor joining in."
"Because we'd had a mild and wet autumn, there was more woodland marcescense sic than usual, and those dead leaves hung stark white on the branches like albino bats, unmoving in the still air."
"It's worth crossing to get the best uninterrupted view of the other two bridges that flank it, but you'd be a brave soul to walk or cycle across on a winter's day with the snell easterly wind scouring its way up the estuary."
"'Well if you had that box here,' he said, 'you could have a bucket of strawberry jam for your tea and if that was not enough you could have a bathful of it to lie in it full-length and if that much did not satisfy you, you could have ten acres of land with strawberry jam spread on it to the height of your two oxters. What do you think of that?'"
"He does not, however, suggest that there is anything spurious in de Selby's equally damaging rhodomontade in the Layman's Atlas where he inveighs savagely against 'the insanitary conditions prevailing everywhere after six o'clock' and makes the famous gaffe that death is merely 'the collapse of the heart from the strain of a lifetime of fits and fainting'."
"It was a small modest whin-bush, a lady member of the tribe as you might say, with dry particles of hay and sheep's feathers caught in the branches high and low."
"Let you go alone and get the box and bring it back here. There are good times coming and we will be rich men tonight. It is sitting under a loose board in the floor of the first room on the right, in the corner forenenst the door."
"No one has ever uncovered even a scrap of a Lapita canoe—it has been too long, the materials are too perishable, the atmosphere too damp—but words for sail, outrigger, boom, washstrake, rib, caulking, paddle, bailing, and cargo can all be reconstructed in Proto-Oceanic, a hypothetical language (like Proto-Indo-European) that is associated with the Lapita expansion."
"Before the arrival of human beings, New Caledonia had one of the most diverse collections of reptiles anywhere on the planet, including a giant horned turtle with a spiked tail, a twenty-pound monitor lizard, and a rare pygmy land crocodile, all of which—along with a giant megapode, a flightless swamp hen, two falcons, a scrub fowl, and several other species of bird—are now extinct."
"Embarking on a voyage to avenge his father's death, Rata faces a series of oceanic dangers, each of which—in an interesting detail—he at first mistakes for land: a giant school of fish that threatens to swamp his canoe; a swordfish that tries to pierce the hull; a powerful, predatory giant cavalla; a monstrous clam that tries to suck the canoe in through its terrible valves."
"There was no real evidence for this, though one writer, pointing to the ubiquitous traces of vulcanism—the scoria, basalt, pumice, and blocks of black glass—that could be found through the islands, concluded that the Pacific, that watery waste, must at some earlier time have been an "abode of fire.""
"The dream of Terra Australis Incognita, with its imagined hoard of silk, spices, and gold, was gone, but the Pacific offered a broad range of exploitable products: fur seals, sandalwood, flax, timber, pearl and turtle shell, bêche-de-mer, and, of course, that most lucrative and alluring of all the ocean's resources: whales."
"Jesus glided out of the dark with underwater fluency; he was resplendent in a short crimson gown, a large velvet hat trimmed with lynx, a golden girdle around his waist, and a golden baldric trailing behind."
- Margery Kempe by Robert Glück (though I came across it quoted by Danielle Dutton in Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other)
Comments by solitude_stands
solitude_stands commented on the word chiel
"He'd have been there, a chiel among us taking notes, proving yet again that you can't quite trust writers."
Winter by Val McDermid
March 1, 2026
solitude_stands commented on the word shoogly
"Even though I can never repeat it on my older and shoogly legs, I can still recall that exhilarating heat of excitement and confidence."
Winter by Val McDermid
March 1, 2026
solitude_stands commented on the word handsel
"We children were sent to bed for a nap in the afternoon so we could stay up to handsel in the new year."
Winter by Val McDermid
March 1, 2026
solitude_stands commented on the word braw
"The air was filled with the smell of hot dogs and the tinny sound of Christmas carols and Bing Crosby roasting chestnuts. I could hear my dad's braw tenor joining in."
Winter by Val McDermid
March 1, 2026
solitude_stands commented on the word marcescence
"Because we'd had a mild and wet autumn, there was more woodland marcescense sic than usual, and those dead leaves hung stark white on the branches like albino bats, unmoving in the still air."
Winter by Val McDermid
March 1, 2026
solitude_stands commented on the word snell
"It's worth crossing to get the best uninterrupted view of the other two bridges that flank it, but you'd be a brave soul to walk or cycle across on a winter's day with the snell easterly wind scouring its way up the estuary."
Winter by Val McDermid
March 1, 2026
solitude_stands commented on the word oxter
"'Well if you had that box here,' he said, 'you could have a bucket of strawberry jam for your tea and if that was not enough you could have a bathful of it to lie in it full-length and if that much did not satisfy you, you could have ten acres of land with strawberry jam spread on it to the height of your two oxters. What do you think of that?'"
- The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien, p 192
January 21, 2026
solitude_stands commented on the word rhodomontade
"He does not, however, suggest that there is anything spurious in de Selby's equally damaging rhodomontade in the Layman's Atlas where he inveighs savagely against 'the insanitary conditions prevailing everywhere after six o'clock' and makes the famous gaffe that death is merely 'the collapse of the heart from the strain of a lifetime of fits and fainting'."
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien, p 120
January 18, 2026
solitude_stands commented on the word defalcation
"'That is a very serious defalcation,' he said, 'but all the same I will tell you the size of it."
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien, p 86
January 17, 2026
solitude_stands commented on the word whin
"It was a small modest whin-bush, a lady member of the tribe as you might say, with dry particles of hay and sheep's feathers caught in the branches high and low."
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien, p 81
January 17, 2026
solitude_stands commented on the word acatalectic
"'I think it is extremely acatalectic,' I answered."
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien, p 77
January 17, 2026
solitude_stands commented on the word sempiternal
"'I think you are a sempiternal man,' he said slowly."
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien, p 68
January 17, 2026
solitude_stands commented on the word gazar
"The head tailor, Miwa Ishii, was finishing a silk gazar shirt for Paltrow."
"Period Correct" by Victoria Uren in the New Yorker's January 19th 2026 issue
January 17, 2026
solitude_stands commented on the word forenenst
"Let you go alone and get the box and bring it back here. There are good times coming and we will be rich men tonight. It is sitting under a loose board in the floor of the first room on the right, in the corner forenenst the door."
- The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
January 14, 2026
solitude_stands commented on the word washstrake
"No one has ever uncovered even a scrap of a Lapita canoe—it has been too long, the materials are too perishable, the atmosphere too damp—but words for sail, outrigger, boom, washstrake, rib, caulking, paddle, bailing, and cargo can all be reconstructed in Proto-Oceanic, a hypothetical language (like Proto-Indo-European) that is associated with the Lapita expansion."
— Sea People by Christina Thompson, p 228
January 11, 2026
solitude_stands commented on the word megapode
"Before the arrival of human beings, New Caledonia had one of the most diverse collections of reptiles anywhere on the planet, including a giant horned turtle with a spiked tail, a twenty-pound monitor lizard, and a rare pygmy land crocodile, all of which—along with a giant megapode, a flightless swamp hen, two falcons, a scrub fowl, and several other species of bird—are now extinct."
Sea People by Christina Thompson, p 223
January 10, 2026
solitude_stands commented on the word kahawai
"It is a barren, windswept place, but rich in marine resources, including kahawai and whitebait, eels, herring, flounder, and shellfish."
Sea People by Christina Thompson, p 206
January 10, 2026
solitude_stands commented on the word cavalla
"Embarking on a voyage to avenge his father's death, Rata faces a series of oceanic dangers, each of which—in an interesting detail—he at first mistakes for land: a giant school of fish that threatens to swamp his canoe; a swordfish that tries to pierce the hull; a powerful, predatory giant cavalla; a monstrous clam that tries to suck the canoe in through its terrible valves."
Sea People by Christina Thompson, p 163
January 4, 2026
solitude_stands commented on the word tridacna
"Or they may be beset by monsters from the deep: enormous octopuses, murderous billfish, giant tridacnas."
Sea People by Christina Thompson, p 162
January 4, 2026
solitude_stands commented on the word billfish
"Or they may be beset by monsters from the deep: enormous octopuses, murderous billfish, giant tridacnas."
Sea People by Christina Thompson, p 162
January 4, 2026
solitude_stands commented on the word scoria
"There was no real evidence for this, though one writer, pointing to the ubiquitous traces of vulcanism—the scoria, basalt, pumice, and blocks of black glass—that could be found through the islands, concluded that the Pacific, that watery waste, must at some earlier time have been an "abode of fire.""
- Sea People by Christina Thompson, p 121
January 4, 2026
solitude_stands commented on the word bêche-de-mer
"The dream of Terra Australis Incognita, with its imagined hoard of silk, spices, and gold, was gone, but the Pacific offered a broad range of exploitable products: fur seals, sandalwood, flax, timber, pearl and turtle shell, bêche-de-mer, and, of course, that most lucrative and alluring of all the ocean's resources: whales."
- Sea People by Christina Thompson, p 116
January 4, 2026
solitude_stands commented on the word calanque
"They had some trouble finding the correct ferry. Most people were boarding another one, to go swimming at the calanques."
- "Marseille" by Ayşegül Savaş, in the April 7, 2025 issue of the New Yorker
April 17, 2025
solitude_stands commented on the word bolide
"But he remained central to our lives, and in his absence, we felt like dislodged bolides wobbling about the universe without orbit."
- Roman Year by André Aciman
March 31, 2025
solitude_stands commented on the word baldric
"Jesus glided out of the dark with underwater fluency; he was resplendent in a short crimson gown, a large velvet hat trimmed with lynx, a golden girdle around his waist, and a golden baldric trailing behind."
- Margery Kempe by Robert Glück (though I came across it quoted by Danielle Dutton in Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other)
August 8, 2024