Squeezed on time

Life is very very hectic at the moment, so I’m squeezed on time. I’m sure I’ll explain all about it later – nothing exciting, just busy stuff! So here is something I prepared earlier (six years ago!!)

I’m looking at another dozen odd words; I’ve been sharing a few rarities recently, thinking maybe I would try and use some of them in my writing – partly to increase and vary my vocabulary, but partly to practice the skill of offering unusual words without baffling the reader or trying to sound a smarty-pants.

If I were to write a science-fiction story – maybe taking up the word I made up by misreading a sonnet by John Masefield – Wanderplace, which would be my intergalactic space craft, then maybe I could refer to the tellurians left behind. Tellurian means of, or inhabiting, the earth – I think that could be used quite easily and successfully in that context.

In my Radwinter stories, Thomas radwinter’s wife has a Tobagan father and family, so it might be quite likely that somehow a soucouvant is mentioned in one of my stories – she is an evil spirit, a shape-shifter, a character who might seem like an old crone but can shed her skin and become something very much more dangerous and terrifying.

Perhaps by having a very clear context, I could use the words transpicuous and vagarious and their meaning would be clear; transpicous simply means transparent, vagarious means erratic and unpredictable – it could be in behaviour or in movement.

Here is my latest list… I might have a Scottish character who gets a skelf in their finger, and Thomas Radwinter might very well come up against a xenologist…

skelf – Scottish a splinter or sliver of wood
soucouyant – a kind of witch, in eastern Caribbean folklore, who is believed to shed her skin by night and suck the blood of her victims
soul catcher – a hollowed bone tube used by a North American Indian medicine man to keep a sick person’s soul safe while they are sick
tellurian – of or inhabiting the earth, or an inhabitant of the earth
thalassic – relating to the sea
thrutch – English a narrow gorge or ravine
transpicuous – transparent
triskelion – a Celtic symbol consisting of three radiating legs or curved lines, such as the emblem of the Isle of Man
turbary – the legal right to cut turf or peat for fuel on common ground or on another person’s ground
vagarious – erratic and unpredictable in behaviour or direction
xenology – the scientific study of extraterrestrial phenomena
zopissa – a medicinal preparation made from wax and pitch scraped from the sides of ships