What’s the Good Word?
By Dave King | January 17, 2017 |
“Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!” J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Whether it’s Dickens struggling to find the perfect character name or Rachel Maddow working to introduce the word “kerfuffle” into our political discourse, a love of words tends to inspire and delight the people who make a living with them. They flow trippingly from the tongue. You can crunch them between your teeth. They reveal odd corners of our linguistic history. They’re just fun.
So how do you use your love of words in telling your story?
I’ve written before about the dangers of letting your language get in the way of your characters. When the original, beautiful, flowing language comes from you rather than them, you run the risk that your readers are going to notice the writer behind the curtain. You don’t want your language to drag them out of the immersion in your world that is the main reason for reading. Besides, writing your narrative in your characters’ voices rather than your own is just too powerful a character-creation tool to ignore. So don’t exercise your love of words unless your characters have a love of words.
Note: this doesn’t mean all your characters have to be sophisticated and erudite, with obscure and glowing vocabularies. I’ve often come across a fresh and surprising use of words from people who didn’t necessarily have a formal education. Like the man here in Ashfield who once told me, “Well, I was married for eight years, with another one for six years, been with the one I’m with now for ten years, and that’s half my life chewed up.” I still treasure that particular use of language.
Words can build worlds as well as characters. I don’t think anywhere but England could have produced “whinge,” which is either a whiny cringe or a cringing whine, depending on whom you ask. England also gave us “coddiwomple:” to travel purposely without a clear destination in mind. I’ve read that all of Greek philosophy rests on the Greek linguistic trick of turning an adjective into a noun by adding a definite article – i.e. “the good, the true, and the beautiful.” And recently a guest on a late-night talk show mentioned her favorite, archtypically German word – backpfeiffengesicht, literally “cheek-slap face.” It’s generally translated as “a face that cries out to be punched.”
The words that a culture churns out show what matters to them, what they pay attention to. So you can often create the sense of an entire world, just by indulging in an appropriate love of words.
Take a look at one of my favorite examples of this, from Mark Helprin’s magical realism story Winter’s Tale. In it, a nineteenth-century machinist, Peter Lake, finds himself in twentieth-century New York (long story) at a surviving power plant full of “machines that had outlived all others of their kind.” The mechanics caring for them don’t fully understand them. Peter does. When he catches them disassembling and trying to figure out the workings of a “double mutterer,” they invite him to help.
The mechanics were confused – until Peter Lake fixed his mad gaze on the machine, and began to work.
“Now look here,” he said, after removing a large panel. “You see this oscillating slotted bar that’s rubbing up too close to the powl and rachet of this here elliptic trammel? That, my friends distorts the impact load on the second hobbing, up there, which is applied to that helical gear. But the trouble is, it isn’t. Without that little helical gear, the antiparallel linkage on the friction drive won’t disengage, and this wormwheeled pantograph can’t come into play. Clear so far?” They nodded.
“And it’s not only that, but you’ve got a jammed friction brake. See? It has to be lubricated with the finest spermaceti. And the two cams on the periflex coupling are on backward.
“If one of you fellas will mill me a buttress-threaded lug nut with a fifty-five degree flank angle, I’ll put the oscillating slotted bar back where it’s supposed to be. Meanwhile, we’ll rearrange the cams and unfreeze the friction brake. Well? What are you waiting for?”
In less than half an hour, the double mutterer was muttering like crazy, and the power train had begun to run as smoothly and quietly as an owl’s swoop.
.A lot of this sounds like the artful creation of the writer, as made up as Dickensian names. But – surprisingly – periflex couplings, friction brakes, helical gears, buttress-threaded lug nuts, and elliptical trammels actually exist, even if you might not be able to assemble them into a double mutterer. But note how the precision of the language creates an atmosphere of loving attention to detail and feeds a need for clarity and concision – I can’t imagine how the complex relationship between the helical gear and the wormwheeled pantograph could have been explained more briefly. The words capture fine distinctions that show what your characters – and the world they come from — value most.
This is true beyond mechanics’ jargon. Some of my favorite words represent fine shades of meaning that reveal a loving attention to the world – like “acnestis,” which means “the place on your back you cannot reach to scratch.” If your character cares about the distinction between “imply” and “infer,” (Nero Wolfe once burned a dictionary because it blurred the distinction) they also care about how ideas are expressed and relate to one another. On the other hand, you can effectively show a pedantry and fussiness by having your characters obsess about fine distinctions that rarely matter in real life – I’ve about given up on “lay/lie.”
Exercising a love of language is one of the things that makes writing a joy. As long as you’re exercising it in the service of your story, have at it. And that’s my final word.
No, actually, my final word is “mugwump.”
The obvious question to ask, of course, is what’s your favorite word? Instead, what’s your favorite instance of a writer using unusual and wonderful words in the service of their story? Where have you seen an entire world conveyed in a single, perfect word?
[coffee]
Dave King has been editing for nearly 40 years now. He is co-author of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, a former contributing editor to Writer’s Digest, and has contributed more than 100 articles over the last 12 years to Writer Unboxed. He lives on 25 acres in rural Massachusetts with his business partner and wife, Ruth Julian, who also edits his work. His other day job, at least on Sundays, is as the organist at a Lutheran church in Greenfield, Mass.
Two of my very favorite things are unusual words and irony. Thus, one of my very, very favoritest things is the word quotidian, which means “ordinary or everyday, especially when mundane.”
Lovely word, “quotidian.” I hear the history in it — from a day when educations included a lot of Latin. I suspect it allowed people to condescend to the less educated, quotidian masses, without the masses realizing what was happening.
Well then, you must read the Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and Women’s Work by Kathleen Norris — it’s a gem of a book!
Dave, I’m suddenly finding myself partial to mugwump. LOL.
Thanks for the great post!
Dee Willson
Author of A Keeper’s Truth and GOT (Gift of Travel)
It does have heft, doesn’t it.
Loved this! One of my favorites is the German “bustenhalter.” No translation necessary.
I love the straightforward — dare I say “quotidian” — way German builds new words. Gloves are “handschuhen” (hand shoes). A nurse is a “krankenschwester” (illness nun).
Every once in a while, this simple word assembly method takes an odd turn, and you get something fresh and original like “schadenfreude” (pity-joy) or “backpfeiffengesicht.” It’s all sorts of fun.
I love that about German. Sanskrit does the same.
Does it really?
I’m actually of two minds about the practice. I do love the way it lets German speakers cook up surprising and fun new terms. On the other hand, I love that English has such a huge and unique vocabulary, every word with its own etymology. That rambling vocabulary makes English tough to master as a second language, but it does lead to some wonderful linguistic curiosities.
I still remember having fun joining so many words so that a single big word is a sentence.
I love all the borrowing that goes on in English. Makes it colorful. Many Hindi words too :) shampoo, jungle, chit, verandah, and my favorite ignite (which comes from the Sanskrit Agni, meaning fire).
I used to work with this lady from Lebanon. She was fluent in 7 languages. According to her, of all of them, English was the most difficult to master due to the slang and synonyms and antonyms. I loved German. I took two years of German in Jr. High School and that was many years ago. I have forgotten much of it.
Serendipity
noun 1. an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident. 2. good fortune; luck. 3. the pleasurable surprise of discovering the unexpected, either in reading or writing a story.
Or a blog post. Thanks to Dave King, no Mugwump, ask me.
(P.S. meaning #3 above is not in the dictionary, but that doesn’t make it any less accurate.)
Love this fun, thoughtful post, Dave. Will forever remember: “The words capture fine distinctions that show what your characters – and the world they come from — value most.” I sort of even followed the mechanic talk—or, at least I didn’t find it off-putting.
Makes me less afraid to get technical, or even to use foreign phrases whose meanings can be guessed at from context. I hate it when I read a foreign phrase that is immediately followed by its definition in parentheses. THAT is off-putting.
I agree with you about foreign phrases, and the use of parentheses in dialogue in general. I remember a review of one of Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt novels some years ago. One of Pitt’s characters had given a measurement in metric, then Pitt put the equivalent in feet in parentheses. The reviewer responded with:
I have deeds to do, and promises to keep
And miles (multiples of 1.6 kilometers) to go before I sleep.
Miles (multiples of 1.6 kilometers) to go before I sleep.
Hahaha!!!
Yes!
I was thinking of this same word, Bernadette, and the way it showed what the Banks children valued in Mary Poppins: her creative fun. Just recently watched it again when it was on network TV. Man, that movie needed some tightening! Yet still I have many fond memories of it. Dociousallyexpeisticfragicalirupus!
Thanks, Dave. Another great aspect of writing: the banquet of words one can choose from. A slight difference in meaning and usage can make all the difference. And your emphasis is appreciated. Characters need to speak the language that says who they are. My main character in my current novel works in medicine. When I can, I thrive on exploring that vocabulary and am currently reading a novel where the MC is a physician to see how that writer dove in.
Even if your readers do not understand the meaning of the jargon, watching your MC use it with fluency and precision is a way to show that he or she is competent.
Love the words mentioned here. One of my favorites is “discombobulate” even though I have trouble spelling it. And I really like the sound of “raccoon”. Some of my stories have raccoons in them so that I may have the joy of saying it.
“Discombobulate” does sound rather like a bowling ball rolling down a flight of stairs, doesn’t it? It almost carries its meaning within it.
Yes! Thanks for a fun post.
Re: raccoons. My younger brother says his favorite place name is “Saskatoon,” because how can you not enjoy saying it?
Good thoughts, Dave. It is words that create the two voices we “hear” in novels–that of the author, and that of a character (or characters). It truly does come down to word choice plus phrasing. Thanks.
Wonderful post; lots of fun, with only one problem. When did the lay/lie issue become a fine distinction that rarely matters in real life? If it doesn’t matter, what else doesn’t matter?
I still like the distinction — it’s far closer to the meaningful end of the scale than the pedantic end. But, sadly, when you tell someone to “lay down,” they will understand what you’re saying. And if a change in the language doesn’t undermine clear unambiguous communication, then it’s probably going to stick.
I’ll keep fighting the battle, but it’s a rearguard action at best — rather like Nero Wolfe once charging a client an extra thousand dollars because he’d used “contact” as a verb.
If someone tells me to “lay down,” I will lie down–but sadly, even if it is a lover.
I fell in love with the word “mooligrubs” while reading Alison Uttley’s a traveler in time. It seems to be one of many variants – but it always indicates either the cholics or a case of the sulks… It’s one of quite a few English words I’ve adopted for use even when speaking my native Italian – together with a few Elizabethan er… colourful interjections. I also love “frampold”, meaning peevish and unquiet, and “clinquant” for glittering, and “gallimaufry” for an oddly matched mess. I find that one of the joys of Elizabethan English – and theatre in particular – is the wealth of wonderful words.
Lovely words, all. I was familiar with “gallimaufry,” but the others are new to me.
Stephen Maturin, Patrick O’Brien’s early nineteenth-century doctor, often treated people for the “marthambles.”
Great post, Dave! There’s a little game I play: I choose a word and let it roll around in my mind all day, considering its meanings, etymology, the sound it makes, how it feels physically to say it, allusions, accidental rhymes, etc.
One of my favorite words is palimpsest. I love the mystery, the half-revealed past, the things that are hidden.
I’ve always enjoyed “palimpsest,” as well.
I’ve had a good belly laugh with some of these words…..thank you all. A friend asked me one day if I was ‘gruntled’ he believed that was the positive of disgruntled.
Jan
I cannot resist.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1994/07/25/how-i-met-my-wife