eating cucumbers without permission...

Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale is a delight, even if its apparent themes are little more than an excuse for the wordplay window-dressing. I might not have found perfect justice, but a hall of light and mirrors built from language is quite enough for me.

One thing that needled, not being the sort to read with dictionary in hand, was this:

Though Mrs. Gamely was by all measures prescientific and illiterate, she did know words. Where she got them was anyone’s guess, but she certainly had them. Virginia speculated that the people on the north side of the lake, steeped in variations of English both tender and precise, had made with their language a tool with which to garden a perfect landscape. Those who are isolated in small settlements may not know of the complexities common to great cities, but their hearts are rich, and so words are generated and retained. Mrs. Gamely’s vocabulary was enormous. She knew words no one had ever heard of, and she used words every day that had been mainly dead or sleeping for hundreds of years. Virginia checked them in the Oxford dictionary, and found that (almost without exception) Mrs. Gamely’s usage was flawlessly accurate. For instance, she spoke of certain kinds of dogs as Leviners. She called the areas near Quebec march-lands. She referred to diclesiums, liripoops, rapparees, dagswains, bronstrops, caroteels, opuntias, and soughs. She might describe something as patibulary, fremescent, pharisaic, Roxburghe, or glockamoid, and words like mormal, jeropigia, endosmic, mage, palmerin, thos, vituline, Turonian, galingale, comprodor, nox, gaskin, secotine, ogdoad, and pintulary fled from her lips in Pierian saltarellos. Their dictionary looked like a sow’s ear, because Virginia spent inordinate proportions of her days racing through it, though when Mrs. Gamely was angry a staff of ten could not have kept pace with her, and half a dozen linguaphologists would have collapsed from hypercardia.

— Winter’s Tale (New York: Harvest, 2005), 225-226

For reference (thanks, Oxford English Dictionary!):

Leviner

? (presumably not from “levin”, to emit flashes of lightning)

march-land

a border territory

diclesium

botanical term for a kind of dry, seed-retaining fruit

liripoop

part of a graduate’s hood in early academic costume; later (presumably by derivation) “to have [one’s] liripoop” was to have learned a lesson or part

rapparee

a 17th-century Irish pikeman; later an Irish bandit

dagswain

a kind of rough bed-cover

bronstrops (singular)

a female procuress [of sexual services]

caroteel

an old commercial measure of quantity (”a caroteel of cloves”)

opuntia

originally a Greek herb; later an American cactus

sough

a whisper or murmur or breath; or, a drain or swampy place; or, a ploughshare

patibulary

of or relating to a gallows (patibulum: fork-shaped gibbet)

fremescent

growing noisy

pharisaic

of the Pharisees, hence legalistic, self-righteous, devoted to the letter and not the spirit

Roxburghe

a style of bookbinding

glockamoid

shaped like an arrow-head (note: not in OED)

mormal

a kind of scab or sore

jeropigia

from Portuguese “geropiga”, a mixture of grape juice, brandy and sugar used to adulterate wines

endosmic

relating to endosmosis, the flow of a fluid from an area of lesser concentration to one of greater

mage

a magician, or more generally a wise man

Palmerin

16th Century Spanish romantic hero, hence any knightly champion

thos

old Greek and Latin name for some kind of canine animal not definitively identified by subsequent historians

vituline

of or like a calf (vitulus: calf)

Turonian

part of the Cretaceous period

galingale

a gingery spice; better known as galangal

comprodor

possibly a misspelling of “comprodor”, a native steward or head servant, intermediary with the locals

Nox

personification of the night, from nox, night

gaskin

a kind of breeches; or, formation from “gasket”

secotine

possibly a misspelling of “Seccotine”, a brand of glue originating in the 19th century

ogdoad

the number eight, a set of eight; or specifically the Ogdoad, eight divine beings of ancient Egypt

pintulary

?

Pierian

relating to Pieria, home of the Muses; hence, poetic

saltarello

an animated Italian and Spanish dance

Trawling the book for the rest of Helprin’s vocabulary I leave for someone else, but special mention is due to “amphibological” — of amphibology/amphiboly, ambiguity of speech, especially deriving from grammatical construction — for appearing in context in the title Amphibological Whimsey Dances. It’s a better name for wordplay than wordplay.