As much as I love words like this, they will probably never accomplish much for the English literary world other than creating these entertaining lists. They are too specific. One of the things I love most is when a book takes a sensation or action I have experienced but never really paid attention to before. It makes me suddenly feel it while I'm reading in a way I never did while it was actually happening to me. It gives us something wonderful to picture. If we actually used these specific words, we would lose those moments of clarity because instead of the description surprising us, it would just be another vocabulary test. They would become as matter-of-fact as words like 'spatula' or 'happy'.
We would have sentences like:
"The girls were very abderian when she said that."
Instead of:
"That did it. The girls in my troop tuned elastic: Drema and Elise doubled up on one another like inextricably entwined kites; Octavia slapped her belly; Janice jumped straight in the air, then did it again, as if to slam-dunk her own head. They could not stop laughing. No one had laughed so hard since a boy named Martez had stuck a pencil in the electric socket and spent the whole day with a strange grin on his face."
--ZZ Packer, Brownies
This:
I had a case of mulligrubs.
Instead of:
"I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo."
--Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
This:
"Her hair reminded her of ruska."
Instead of:
"When I think back about my immediate reaction to that redheaded girl, it seems to spring from an appreciation of natural beauty. I mean the heart pleasure you get from looking at speckled leaves or the palimpsested bark of plane trees in Provence. There was something richly appealing in her color combination, the ginger snaps floating in the milk-white skin, the gold highlights in the strawberry hair. It was like autumn, looking at her. It was like driving up north to see the colors."
--Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex
This:
"That day of the funeral was full of apanthropinization."
Instead of:
"I remembered the morning of my mother's funeral. I'd been given milk to settle my stomach; I'd pretended it was coffee. I imagined I was drinking coffee elsewhere. Some Arabic-speaking country where the thick coffee served in little cups was so strong it could keep you awake for days."
--ZZ Packer, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
This:
"I felt numinous when I thought about him."
Instead of:
"If I try to summon back his face, the sound of his voice, and the sensation in my stomach like a key turning in a lock when he touched me, I lose everything."
--Joyce Carol Oates, First Love: A Gothic Tale
Or this:
"I had yoko meshi when I tried to learn how to speak French."
Instead of:
"On my fifth trip to France I limited myself to the words and phrases that people actually use. From dog owners I learned "Lie down," "Shut up," and "Who shit on this carpet?" The couple across the road taught me to ask questions correctly, and the grocer taught me to count. Things began to come together, and I went from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. "Is thems the thoughts of cows?" I'd ask the butcher, pointing to the calves' brains displayed in the front window. "I want me some lamb chops with handles on 'em."
--David Sedaris, See You Again Yesterday
It may seem strong to claim these words as less vibrant than full sentences, but that's how I feel about them.
Or maybe, I'm just making a pettifoggery about hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian words simply because I am cursed with ultracrepidarianism.
much love,
hedgie
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