Word Alert: Kraken

I just read China Miéville’s Kraken. The pages were packed with exact vocabulary, both real and aptly concocted. Some of the novel terms I looked up:

• horripilation: goose bumps! (The shared root with horror is the bristling of hair, as with dread.)
• atrament: an inky black substance – such as cephalopod ink.
• plastination: a specimen preservation technique whereby certain tissues are replaced with plastics.
• oneiric: dreamy.
• nous: reasoning, inner purpose, or capacity for perception; common sense.
• aleatory: depending on luck or chance.
• fylfot: a bent-arm cross symbol; a swastika.
• alterity: otherness; the state of being “altered.”
• maundered: wandered aimlessly (on foot or perhaps in speech).
• hecatomb: a mass sacrifice, especially of 100 cattle. (Gruesome related bonus word from an unrelated Wikipedia rabbit hole: tauroctony, the sacrifice of a bull as depicted as a religious icon. Humans are weird!)
• shabti: Egyptian statuette intended to act as a servant to royalty in the afterlife. (My favorite character in Kraken was Wati, the revolutionary union-organizing body-hopping shabti.)

Kraken is an obvious work of fan service to word nerds like me. The magic of ink and paper and words is literalized through the nonstop mayhem and imagination of the plot.

Posted on Friday, December 19th, 2025. Tags: words.