Word Roundup

Here’s a corral of words I gathered in my travels the latter half of this year.

Continuing from previous word alert entries, here are some words from the remainder of Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groans:

• plaice: a type of fish.
• escutcheon: a nameplate or surface bearing symbols of heraldry.
• querail: quarrelsome? A Peake-ism.
• gelid: cold.
• gateau: cake.
• glacid: from context, describing a deep clear sky — glassy (or maybe glacé) + placid? Another Peake-ism, I think.
• palliasse: straw mattress or similar bedding.
• benison: benediction or blessing.

I set the rest of Gormenghast aside to sample bite by bite at a later date.

From Gideon the Ninth, book one of Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb series:

• uncanorous: unpleasant to the ear; not canorous.
• parclose: a screen or railing that separates part of a church or tomb from a more public area. (This definition lead me to read about hagioscopes and anchorites — yeesh.)
• complaisant: obliging and compliant; eager to serve (to be complacent is similar but perhaps more passive).
• catarrh: a phlegmy inflammation of mucous membranes.
• folderol: nonsense!
• cavil: to raise frivolous objections. To cite a lot of folderol.
• deliquesce: to dissolve, perhaps specifically in a slimy fungal sort of way.
• lahar: volcanic mudslide.
• tergiversation: wishy-washiness; evasive flip-flopping. (I think this one came from book two, Harrow the Ninth.)

From The Knight, book one of Gene Wolfe’s Wizard Knight duology:

• purling: gold embroidery or the swirling motion and babbling sound of a brook.
• chary: wary and prudent.
• raddle: a rod woven into the structure of a fence, or something so woven.
• merlon: the raised parts of a battlement; the gaps between them are crenels. Used as an adjective: merloned.

There were more (it was Wolfe, after all), but I think I took a break from noting new words around the time I read this book.

From other books I’ve read in recent months:

• yclept (from Nick Mamatas’ fandom pastiche I Am Providence): named or called.
• agnate (from an Ann Leckie story auxiliary to Ancillary Justice): paternal lineage; in-universe, a matriarchal clan.
• cynosure (from the forthcoming Book of Flaco): a focal attraction, or a guide to such a point of attraction.
• abseil (from Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time): to rappel up or down a rope (or spiderweb).
• condottiere (from the illustrated owl book The Nightwatchers by Angus Cameron and Peter Parnnall): a mercenary.
• cyma (also from The Nightwatchers): the “S” shape where a convex and concave curve meet. Bonus term: ogee, a pointed arch formed from a pair of cyma curves.
• refulgent (from Return of the Osprey by David Gessner): radiant.
• quincunx (from The Book of Barely Imagined Beings by Caspar Henderson): an arrangement of five points, as on the five-pipped face of a die.
• irenic (from The Future of Life by E. O. Wilson): conducive to peace or reconciliation.
• pettifogging (from Encounter with the Archdruid by John McPhee): quibbling or posing petty objections.
• plebiscite (from Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh) a referendum or vote among the whole electorate.

From other media, articles, and unrecorded sources:

• suzerainty (from the comic adaptation of Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser illustrated by Mike Mignola): the domain of a feudal lord.
• sinecure (from Gary K Wolf’s review 0f a Sofia Samatar book): a cushy job or office with little responsibility.
• welter (from a game of Words with Friends, and subsequently seen elsewhere): to be jumbled or tossed about, especially as on the waves.
• embayment (from an article in NY DEC’s Conservationist magazine): a bay or the surrounding coastal landform
• quiddity (from a China Miéville essay): an essential essence, perhaps found only in the details of a thing.
• adumbrated (from David Langford’s Omega Point entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [SFE], a reference that leans hard into esoteric terminology): foreshadowed.
• afflatus (from a John Clute quote in the Wikipedia article on Gordon Dickson): divine inspiration.
• empyrean (from a NYT Style article about Pat Sajak’s retirement): a heavenly region.
• octavo: a book formed by folding (and perhaps cutting) printed sheets into eighths; compare to the more common folio.
• mondegreen: a misheard lyric.
• vastation: devastation.
• factotum: a person or worker who performs many roles.

Are these words relics, raw materials, or highly refined terminological technology? Perhaps all of the above.

Posted on Thursday, December 12th, 2024.

December 2024 Art Update

Everything is on sale at my Etsy shop at the moment, thanks to a site-wide sale ending soon. I dropped three orders off at the post office this morning (herons; seashells; firetowers), so the promotion seems to be working. For me, Etsy is less a money-maker than a sort of public record of building a brand as a “professional artist” – and perhaps more importantly, as an outlet for my stacks of surplus prints and other art projects. So help me declutter and pick up some prints today!

I’m presently taking my first-ever hiatus from my Patreon since I started it in 2016. This is a two-month break for November and December 2024. Patron support is absolutely to credit for my growth as an artist over the past eight years, thanks of course to the modest financial incentive but also to the interrelated effect of regular practice and experimentation. As patrons and portfolio visitors know, portraiture and printmaking are my jam. In recent years, I’ve framed this work as part of various episodic projects for Patreon; sometimes implicitly and sometimes too ambitiously, but in retrospect always constructively. So, I look forward to conceiving new ways to refine my work and of course to sending out more art to patrons in 2025.

In the meantime: later this month Kelly and I will have a small diptych on display in the Tioga Arts Council’s Collaborations exhibit; I have a commissioned print to work on ASAP; and last but not least I hope to draw a few portraits as personal gifts.

Posted on Monday, December 2nd, 2024.

Meta Blogging

Here are some upcoming posts:

• ☑️ A massive new word alert post, possibly split into multiple posts by source. I gathered many more words from Titus Groan, as well as a wealth of words from other books and articles encountered in the past few months.
• First impressions of my new-to-me Boox Tab Mini C e-Ink tablet, as well as some interesting example use cases, tips, and quibbles. (I’m writing this post by hand on it.) Spoiler: it’s not for everyone, but it is for me.
• ☑️ Art updates: Current projects; Etsy promotions; Patreon hiatus status and plans.
• Books of 2024: something new to ease [back] in to “book blogging” here: an end-of-year recap of what I read in 2024. To keep this manageable, it may just be a list, but sooner or later I’d like to write a bit more about my reading, and/or integrate my art in this process even if not in the zine format I attempted in 2023.

Posted on Monday, December 2nd, 2024.

Etsy Shop Updated

As noted in yesterday’s update at jimdevona.art, I’ve relisted an assortment of affordable prints in my Etsy shop.

Posted on Thursday, October 10th, 2024.

Hubble and Voyager Prints

A series of four new space-themed prints featuring spacecraft and associated scientists:

Hubble Space Telescope & Edwin Hubble

Voyager project scientist Ed Stone & Voyager

Posted on Tuesday, July 23rd, 2024.

The Book of Flaco

I’m pleased to announce that my Flaco print will appear as chapter header art in The Book of Flaco by David Gessner, forthcoming in 2025 from Blair Publishing.

Posted on Tuesday, July 23rd, 2024.

Woodcock Prints

My patron print for April was an American Woodcock. Patreon subscribers got one in the mail as part of their monthly maildrop for April. Prints on fancy paper (pictured above) are available on Etsy, too.

Posted on Sunday, May 5th, 2024.

Kindle 3 Battery Replacement

Twelve years ago I replaced the damaged screen of my 2010-era Kindle 3. I don’t use it frequently, but every so often I dig it out. A few weeks ago I brought it on a weekend trip, and the normally-inexhaustible battery ran down over the course of a few days. So, I replaced it.

For a device with a rechargeable battery, fourteen years – with many long periods of dormancy — is a pretty good battery lifespan. Of course, it is utterly ridiculous for a book to run out of batteries at all, but that’s a separate discussion.

As others have noted, iFixIt’s guide for this battery replacement starts with a poorly-phrased step that advises you to begin prying the cover off at single most vulnerable point. So if you happen to find this post while preparing to replace your Kindle Keyboard battery, read past the first few lines of the guide before you start shoving your spudger into the seam.

Posted on Sunday, April 21st, 2024.

Gormenghast Vocabuloot #2

I’m not quite halfway through Titus Groan, the first installment of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast. It’s a peculiar book which merits a separate effort to describe. Briefly: the vibes are certainly gothic, but it isn’t edgy or grimdark; in fact, the characters and scenarios are really quite kooky. It reminds me of The Phantom Tollbooth or especially Roald Dahl’s work. What pulls me along is not necessarily the plot but the wry humor lurking in the locution of so many sentences.

Speaking of word choice: I admit I’m a fan of esoteric vocabulary. Here be more of the treasure I’ve picked up from Peake so far:

• Welkin: the sky or the heavens above.
• Cruet: a stoppered bottle for oil or vinegar (I knew the thing but not the name).
• Marl: a crumbly soil rich with calcium carbonate, traditional used to neutralize acidic soil for agriculture.
• Byre: a stable, barn, or “cow house”.
• Infanta: daughter of a monarch.
• Mantilla: lacy formal head scarf.
• Hake: fish.
• Lapsury:  one of Peake’s many portmanteaus; the lap of luxury.
• Fustian: a pretentious style of speech.
• Fructify: to bear fruit or become fruitful.
• Dropsical: swollen with fluid; inflicted with dropsy (edema).
• Pellucid: transparent.
• Abactinal: pertaining to the end opposite the mouth.
• [C]apparisoned: clothed?
• Interlarded: interspersed or interlaced.
• Calumny: defamation or deceptive description.

Posted on Friday, April 5th, 2024.

jimdevona.art update

I updated my art portfolio site so that it, too, is now running WordPress, which will make it easier to update and organize: jimdevona.art

Posted on Thursday, April 4th, 2024.