Another two for the price of one sentence. It's worth mentioning that all these posts so far have come from within only thirty pages or so of the same book. Brogan - a coarse work shoe reaching to the ankle. Moiling - the first definition is requiring hard work, but McCarthy uses the second definition: …
new words – murrhine
Cormac McCarthy is one of many authors known to make up words, either by sticking two separate words together, or by using them in unusual ways. This is one example. Murrhine means of, relating to, or made of murra, which is a material thought to be of semiprecious stone or porcelain used to make costly …
new words – rondelay
again from The Orchard Keeper, this is an alternate spelling of roundelay, which is a poem or song with a regularly recurring refrain. When it contains the words round, and delay, one can almost anticipate this meaning, especially given the context of the scene it was describing. Here is the tail end of a long …
new words – suppurant
Continuing with my posts about new words - here is another one which is not only nice to look at, but seems to fit in shape and sound with its definition. The root is suppurate - to form or discharge pus. Here is the sentence, again from The Orchard Keeper. This is part of a …
lovely words
As one who has been reading constantly for most of my life, I don't often encounter new words anymore. Except, that is, when I read something by Cormac McCarthy. I decided I should start keeping track of my favorites when I, today, encountered two new beauties in the same sentence. Here they are: Coomb (also …
Jonas David 