Gene Wolfe

sionnach commented on the list gene-wolfe

Obviously it's a subjective call, but to me the words below seem fairly common, certainly relative to most of the others on the list:

lump, veil, rent, stalk, rut, reel, apron, rinse, proper, swerve, quarry.

In a few cases, I can imagine that you might have added them because of a less common secondary meaning - for instance, rut as a verb, rent as a past participle of rend, and so forth.

January 4, 2009

Telofy commented on the list gene-wolfe

Thanks, and also for my profile comment.

Yes, I'm to some degree dependent on input from you guys as it is rather hard for me to differentiate between those words which are new only to me and such which might also be a novelty to native speakers. In some cases—for example proper—I've added the corresponding citation to the word page. In some cases I probably neglected to do that though it would have been necessary, but in many cases—apron being one of them I think—I simply didn't know the word at that time and copied it onto one of my special Wordie sheets.

So thanks a lot for your words, I'll process them immediately. :-)

January 4, 2009

Prolagus commented on the list gene-wolfe

I have the same problem, telofy, but for my "words from books" lists I decided to add those words that are interesting to me. Have a look if you like...

Mr. Prolagus is surprised (words from Anne of Green Gables)

Wrapped up in books (words from various books)

January 4, 2009

mutandis26 commented on the list gene-wolfe

How about including "palaestra", "rajan", "azoth", "augur", "caldé", "needler", "slug gun" and "inhumi/inhuma/inhumu" (In Green's Jungles) and "ghoulbear" (The Fifth Head of Cerberus)?

July 17, 2009

Telofy commented on the list gene-wolfe

Wonderful, another Gene Wolfe reader. Welcome to my list.

I haven't read those two books yet. Next I'll turn to The Book of the Long Sun and There Are Doors.

Have great fun.

July 17, 2009

mutandis26 commented on the list gene-wolfe

Thanks! Gene Wolfe is a writer of astounding creativity, with great style and acumen. If I ever come across words that are not on this list yet, I'll include them here.

July 17, 2009

Telofy commented on the list gene-wolfe

Word!

And thanks in advance.

July 17, 2009

Telofy commented on the list gene-wolfe

A little excerpt from The Book of the Long Sun showing the kind of slang (usually called thieves' cant) some people in the City of Viron speak:

    "That could get him tried for murder, Jugs," Auk told her. "No, what you want to do is roll this Crane over to Hoppy. Only if you're going to queer it, you'd be better off doing him. They'll beat it out of you, grab the deck and send you with him. It'd be a lily grab on you, Jugs, 'cause you helped

him. As for the Patera here, Crane saw to his hoof and rode him to Orchid's in his own dilly, so it'd be candy to smoke up something."

    He waited for them to contradict him, but neither did.

    "Only if you go flash, if you roll him over to some bob culls with somebody like me to say Pas for you, we'll all be stanch cits and heroes too. Hoppy'll grab the glory while we buy him rope. That way he'll hand us a smoke smile and a warm and friendly shake, hoping we'll have something else to roll another time. I've got to have pals like that to lodge and dodge. So do you two, you just don't know it. You scavy I never turned up the bloody rags, riffling some cardcase's ken? You scavy I covered 'em up and left him be? Buy it, I washed him if he'd stand still. And if he wouldn't, why, I rolled him over."

    Silk nodded. "I see. I felt that your guidance would be of value, and I don't believe that Chenille could call me wrong. Could you, Chenille?"

    She shook her head, her eyes sparkling.

    "That's rum, 'cause I'm not finished yet. What's this hotpot's name, Jugs?"

    "Simuliid."

    "I'm flash. Big cully, ox weight, with a mustache?"

    She nodded.

August 8, 2009

Telofy commented on the list gene-wolfe

For comparison a letter in an upper class dialect from the same book:

    30th Nemesis 332

    To the Clergy of the Chapter,

    Both Severally and Collectively

    Greetings in the name of Pas, in the name of Scylla, and in the names of all gods! Know that you are ever in my thoughts, as in my heart.

    The present disturbed state of Our Sacred City obliges us to be even more conscious of our sacred duty to minister to the dying, not only to those amongst them with whose recent actions we may sympathize, but to all those to whom, as we apprehend, Hierax may swiftly reveal his compassionate power. Thus it is that I implore you this day to cultivate the perpetual and indefatigable predisposition toward mercy and pardon whose conduit you so frequently must be.

    Many of you have appealed for guidance in these most disturbing days. Nay, many appeal so still, even hourly. Most of you will have learned before you read this epistle of the lamented demise of the presiding officer of the Ayuntamiento.

    The late Councillor Lemur was a man of extraordinary gifts, and his passing cannot but leave a void in every heart. How I long to devote the remainder of this necessarily curtailed missive to mourning his passing. Instead, for such are the exactions of this sad whorl, the whorl that passes, my duty to you requires that I forewarn you without delay against the baseless pretexts of certain vile insurgents who would have you to believe that they act in the late Councillor Lemur's name.

    Let us set aside, my beloved clergy, all fruitless debate regarding the propriety of an intercaldéan caesura spanning some two decades. That the press of unhappy events then rendered an interval of that kind, if not desirable, then unquestionably attractive, we can all agree. That it represented, to judgements not daily schooled to the nice discriminations of the law, a severe strain upon the elasticity of our Charter, we can agree likewise, can we not? The argument is wholly historical now. O beloved, let us resign it to the historians.

    What is inarguable is that this caesura, to which I have had reason to refer above, has attained to its ordained culmination. It cannot, O my beloved clergy, as it should not, survive the grievous loss which it has so recently endured. What, then, we may not illegitimately inquire, is to succeed that just, beneficent and ascendant government so sadly terminated?

    Beloved clergy, let us not be unmindful of the wisdom of the past, wisdom which lies in no less a vehicle than our own Chrasmologic Writings. Has it not declared, "Vox poputi, vox dei"? which is to say, in the will of the masses we may discern words of Pas's. At the present critical moment in the lengthy epic of Our Sacred City, Pas's grave words are not to be mistaken. With many voices they cry out that the time has arrived for a precipitate return to that Charteral guardianship which once our city knew. Shall it be said of us that we stop our ears to Pas's words?

    Nor is their message so brief, and so less than mistakable. From forest to lake, from the proud crown of the Palatine to the humblest of alleys they proclaim him. O my beloved clergy, with what incommunicable joy shall I do so additionally. For Supreme Pas has, as never previously, espoused for our city a caldé from within our own ranks, an anointed augur, holy, pious, and redolent of sanctity. …

August 23, 2009

25513195 commented on the list gene-wolfe

Thanks for the list! I'll definitely check back here as I read to some of the more mysterious words I come across. I love his writing style and use of both old and invented words. For the most part there's always just enough context for me to imagine what they refer to, but at the same time I love how he treats you like you should already know what they mean, even when you really shouldn't know, and in that way allows your imagination more room to wonder, which is what good fiction should do.

June 25, 2010

Telofy commented on the list gene-wolfe

Thanks, I hope my list will be of service to you, in some way. Of course, as a fan, I have to insist that none of his words are entirely invented, that all of them have some root one might be able to discern if one knows Greek, Latin, Spanish, and a few more languages.

When I read The Book of the New Sun for the first time a few years ago (thanks to Julia Ecklar’s song Terminus Est) I had—English being my second language—no way of secerning the two categories of, to me, unknown words you mentioned. I understood what was going on and, naturally, looked up lots of words (that was before I found Wordie, today’s Wordnik) but in rereading it now, yet more dimensions of the text unfold, as, for example, this (reader-teasing part of a) paragraph about Mater Gurloes:

He ate too much and too seldom, read when he thought no one knew of it, and visited certain of our clients, including one on the third level, to talk of things none of us eaves-dropping in the corridor outside could understand. His eyes were refulgent, brighter than any woman's. He mispronounced quite common words: urticate, salpinx, bordereau. I cannot well tell you how bad he looked when I returned to the Citadel recently, how bad he looks now.

—Gene Wolfe, “The Shadow of the Torturer”, chapter 

June 25, 2010

25513195 commented on the list gene-wolfe

Haha, yea I love how he pulls us right into the world by assuming that those are common to us. I didn't look them up at the time though, so it's interesting to find out what they mean.

That's awesome that it was through one of his words that you found out about the book, and I now see what you mean about how none of his words are really invented. My favorite one so far is baluchither. I thought of it as an elephant type animal but without a trunk, since no trunk was mentioned anywhere. In my mind I also gave it more of a protruding, lizard-like head, for what reason I don't really know. Just recently found out that it in fact refers to a huge, now extinct, hornless rhinoceros (baluchitherium or indricothere), which looks surprisingly close to what I envisioned.

Pretty awesome what words can do.

June 26, 2010

Telofy commented on the list gene-wolfe

Unfortunately, I haven’t read any of the books you mentioned on my temporary Urth list, but another one I did read was There Are Doors. What I found especially intriguing in that novel is his subtle play with narrative perspective. Surprisingly, the story is told from a third-person perspective, but one soon notices that this is nothing but a clever disguise for a highly subjective narration. Even the writing style changes with the mental state of the protagonist. :-)

I have a propensity for subvocalization, so I often stumble on words whose pronunciation I don’t know or can’t settle on. For baluchither I can come up with one that seems natural enough, and the word is not too frequent throughout the books (one occurrence in Urth; eleven in Claw), but there are many words that renew my discombobulation each time I try to read them. In an interview with Gene Wolfe the interviewer kept pronouncing autarch /ˈɔtɑrtʃ/ instead of /ˈɔtɑrk/. Luckily, the word is comparatively well dictionaried, so I could learn that it wasn’t just me who had that problem.

Oh, and by the way, welcome to Wordnik!

Update: Ah, baluchithere is pronounced /bəˈlutʃəˌθɪər/, so without the extra e the pronunciation the word seemed to have whispered into my third ear, /bəˈlutʃəˌθər/, seems close enough.

June 27, 2010

25513195 commented on the list gene-wolfe

Thanks! 'There Are Doors' sounds great - I've read books that are told in 3rd person but still subjective to one or more of the characters, but nothing quite like the way that sounds. I also subvocalize waay too much, which is probably why I don't read very fast, so I'm the same way with word pronunciations. In the worst cases I just skip the word entirely when reading, and many times I find that I've been pronouncing one wrong in my head the entire time and it's almost impossible to revert to the real pronunciation.

June 30, 2010

Telofy commented on the list gene-wolfe

If I have to read long, plainly written non-fiction texts I sometimes try to read without the subvocalization, but often, not only with fiction, I feel like I’d be missing out on much of the sentence melody, so I can’t really muster the motivation to actually train speed reading techniques.

When you relearn a pronunciation for some obscure word, do you also go through such interesting phases as, for example, when your brain had tagged the spelling with “this other pronunciation is the correct one”, only, the correct pronunciation has already become the more familiar to you and thus changed places with the incorrect one, making the incorrect one “the other pronunciation” and you end up in complete discombobulation?

June 30, 2010

25513195 commented on the list gene-wolfe

Hah, yea I've had things like that happen. When I'm trying to pronounce something differently I always have to hesitate and think when I come to the word. Reading is such a subconscious action that it's hard reverse a long-time habit.

If you haven't read 'Latro in the Mist' though I'd recommend that. It's a written account much like 'New Sun,' but in this case the narrator forgets everything each day so he writes it all down, instead of 'New Sun' where the narrator remembers everything clearly.

July 3, 2010

Telofy commented on the list gene-wolfe

I’ve read several very favorable reviews of that novel. Fascinating, how, with regard to memory, two opposite extremes can be used to very similar ends.

Is there a term for such elaborate subterfuges as (some) authors employ to increase the verisimilitude of their narrative by linking the world of their novel with the reader’s? (Explaining how TBotNS found its way back into our time, why it’s in English, why all direct speech is actually verbatim, etc.)

July 3, 2010

25513195 commented on the list gene-wolfe

Ah it explains that? I guess I'll get to that part. Yea I don't know what that term might be or if there is a term for it, but I really enjoy novels that use that technique effectively. You might like Crichton's "Eaters of the Dead," which probably takes the technique further than anything else I've read.

July 7, 2010

Telofy commented on the list gene-wolfe

When you read the beginning (or so) of The Urth of the New Sun, you can at least form theories how it may have found its way to 20th century Illinois, so Gene Wolfe could translate it. ;-)

Btw., for such cases when you can’t think of the right word or can’t recall it, we have this list.

July 7, 2010

25513195 commented on the list gene-wolfe

Nice - I'm sure that will come in handy.

July 21, 2010

blafferty commented on the list gene-wolfe

*love*

Gene Wolfe is so creative with his words.

Oh, and ...

*favorited*

June 30, 2011

Telofy commented on the list gene-wolfe

Thanks. :-)

July 4, 2011

mererhetorix commented on the list gene-wolfe

Great List!

January 6, 2012

Telofy commented on the list gene-wolfe

Thanks!

January 6, 2012

anagrammarian commented on the list gene-wolfe

Bothy a cottage which is left open for anyone to use usually for gardeners.

Severian uses it after in Sword of the Lictor after coming down from the right eye.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bothy

February 29, 2016

anagrammarian commented on the list gene-wolfe

Brilliant list. I added a comment in amschaspand as to its likely meaning. Also posted bothy which could be added !

February 29, 2016