New Word Alert – Gormenghast #1

First, two cultural terms:

• Pagris: turbans, specifically those used in India
• Sawm: fasting, as one of the five pillars of Islam

A printmaking term:

• Quoin: an expanding device used to lock letterpress type in place. (Also a masonry term for cornerstones or keystones.)

Last but not least, a big batch of words from the beginning of Titus Groan, book one of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy. I’ve had the omnibus for some time but just started reading it. It’s delightfully strange and surprisingly funny — and definitely rife with unfamiliar vocabulary.

• Cantonment: a military base or barracks.
• Recrudescent: like an outbreak, or reopening of wounds.
• Propinquintel or propinquity: proximity, especially as it pertains to relationships; kinship.
• Calid: hot! Hace calor.
• Rissole: a breaded delicacy.
• Pullulation: sprouting or proliferating; in context, teeming.
• Hayrick: aka a haystack.
• Spilth: that which hath been spilled.
• Rabous: new word alert, or not-a-word alert? Possibly a typo for rufous (or, less likely, raucous).

Posted on Wednesday, February 14th, 2024.