This week I was cleaning off my desk, and I came across the notes I took while reading A.S. Byatt’s Possession back in April (yes, it took me more than six months to clean my desk). About halfway through the novel, I started writing down all the rare and delightful words that pop up in the text—and ended up with four pages’ worth. I wonder if A.S. Byatt’s everyday speech is peppered with this kind of unusual vocabulary.
Here are some of my favorites:
- carapace
- silex
- besprent
- celandine
- exiguous
- vulpine
- recension
- odylic
- moquette
- aperçu
- hypostatisation
What are your favorite bookish sources for unusual words?
Rosemary and Reading Glasses 
The only source I have for unusual words is my 9 year-old… 😉
Ha! Neologisms or stuff that kids these days talk about?
Yes, of the gastroenterological sort…
Gross!
Nice! I don’t know what “besprent” means (and neither, apparently, does my dictionary), but it sounds like a lazy summer day.
I think it’s a participle. “Sprinkled,” as I recall.
Okay, I looked it up online. The past participle of a word meaning sprinkle. Still nice!
Should have read the comments all at once!
Oh, missed that!
Oh, I see what you mean. I wrote that comment about what it means a couple of hours ago.
Amazing! I have the same list in a notebook somewhere! “Possession” is one of my favourite books and I kept a vocubulary list the last time I read it. I think I got up to about four pages of words. That A. S. Byatt knocks my socks off with her cleverness.
You’re so right! My full list is pages long, too — such a pleasure to read someone who forces you to think about words!
I don’t have to tell you what I think of Byatt — the woman is a genius…..and her extravagant vocabulary is one of the things I love most about reading her. It would be interesting if she did pepper her everyday speech with such verbal delicacies…but it might also kill conversations flat. Somehow I just don’t think I could pull off faking that I knew what odylic means….assuming I ever had the privilege of being IN a conversation with Ms. Byatt in which I was not catatonic with awe….
Tonight is the last class of this session of my writing class and we are doing a paperback exchange. I’m bringing Possession….wondering who will get it and whether she will like it????
Thanks for waving the Team Byatt flag once more! 🙂
🙂
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