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.

Words of the Week

A few spells I overheard in recent wanderings through the hinterlands of the written world:

• sepultured: buried. (Alternate spelling of sepulcher.)
• brio: vigor, vivacity, verve. (Thanks, MW, for an alliterative definition.)
• tath: manure, or a field enriched by it.
• condign: deserving or appropriate.
• rhyton: a horn-and-animal-shaped drinking vessel/funnel from antiquity.
• parlous: perilous.
• psaltery: a harp-like stringed instrument.

Stand by for another quiver full of freshly-fletched vocabularrows soon: I’m reading China Miéville’s Kraken right now, and it’s rich with specific diction.

Posted on Friday, December 12th, 2025. Tags: words.

November Word Alert

Eight new-to-me words I recently encountered:

• hebdomadal: “a rare and curious term” for weekly; a hebdomad is a group of seven [days].
• descanted: to descant is to sing or play a musical counterpoint.
• hortatory: of prescriptive or persuasive speech; language that exhorts.
• meed: an old term for one’s pay or due.
• fils: French for son; appended to a name to distinguish a son from a father, similar to junior (but perhaps in cases where no such suffix is given as part of the name).
• entente: a shared understanding or intent, especially in a geopolitical sense. (See also the more familiar détente.)
• apopthegm: alternate spelling of apothegm: an aphorism or wise saying.
• ambit: scope or extent; perhaps literally describing the route of a patrol but today more likely to denote the jurisdiction of an office.

Posted on Saturday, November 29th, 2025. Tags: words.