Saturday 5 October 2024

New Recipes of Summer

My goodness, summer went quickly! It was a season of delicious cooking and eating. Here is what I made, and also two recommendations for places to find new recipes to try.

  1. If you're not a follower of the Woks of Life food blog, I highly recommend it! One of my favourite things I made this summer was their Asian Shrimp Salad. If you love cucumber, as I do, this will probably be to your taste (and the cucumber-averse could probably substitute peppers or another crunchy, watery vegetable). The recipe calls for using raw red onion, but I dislike raw onions in my salads, so I changed it by sauteing the onions, aromatics, and shrimp in the oil (rather than the just the shrimp, as instructed). I'd recommend making this change to the recipe.
  2.  A small section of my cookbook collection is devoted to food from the United States, especially from New England. Erin French's two cookbooks are my favourites out of all of them. Her food often has an usual technique or combination ingredients--like a sweet cake made with parsnips and frosted with apricot-jam sweetened marscapone; or the Brown Sugar & Maple Glazed Pork Tenderloin with Roasted Fruit, which my mom and I made twice in quick succession when I was home. I will remember it as something to make for future dinner parties. Fruit and meat are not a combination I often use and it tasted wonderful. The instructions for the glaze don't work as written--at least on parents' gas stove, it didn't need to boil for nearly as hard or as long as the instructions said. Provided you keep a sharp eye on the glaze, it's a pretty perfect recipe.

July

  • Shiitake, Kimchi, and Pineapple Fried Rice from Stir Crazy by Ching He Huang
  • Edamame Mapo Tofu from Stir Crazy by Ching He Huang
  • Beef and Kimchi Water Chestnuts from Stir Crazy by Ching He Huang
  • Leek, Chard, and Corn Flatbread from Smitten Kitchen by Deb Perelman

 August

  • Asian Shrimp Salad from Woks of Life
  • Sabzi per eedu (Parsi-style eggs on vegetables) from Masala by Mallika Basu
  • Brown Sugar & Maple Glazed Pork Tenderloin with Roasted Fruit from Big Heart, Little Stove by Erin French
  • Lauryn's Hot-Sugar-Crust Peach Cake from Bake Smart by Samantha Seneviratne  

September

  • Three Cup Tofu from Woks of Life
  • Creamy Tomato Masala from Smitten Kitchen Keepers by Deb Perelman 
  • Süddeutsche Lauchtore from Classic German Baking by Luisa Weiss
  • Chicken Teriyaki with Green Peppers from Stir Crazy by Ching He Huang
  • White Bean and Garlic Soup, from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant

Sunday 22 September 2024

No Such Thing as Too Many Books, Redux

To Be Read (TBR) piles are a popular subject: the first page of Google search results provides a wide variety of tips for "managing" or "getting through" the books one hasn't yet read. My own strategy is to make periodic lists of them--my last one was in 2022--and to use the list as an aide-mémoire when I find myself in a bookstore or library. Listing the book puts me under no obligation to read it, now or ever, but it's exciting to gather all the possibilities of what I might read.

Which of these books would you pick up first?

1. C.J. Cherryh, Hammerfall



On the list because the title is cool, and becayse Cherryh is one of the many famous and well-regarded science fiction authors whose works I have yet to read.

2. T. Kingfisher, Paladin's Grace

My sister enthusiastically recommends this book and the larger series of which is a part, The Saint of Steel. Apparently, this features an angst-y paladin who knits socks. My interest is piqued.

3. May Sarton, The Small Room

I loved The House by the Sea, one of Sarton's journals, and I've enjoyed a number of her poems, but I don't know her work as a novelist. I'm not immediately attracted to campus novels but this one seems worth a try.

4. John Darnielle, Devil House

I know John Darnielle from his music (one of my goals in life is to see his band, The Mountain Goats, live). I don't usually read or want to read horror novels but this seems like it could be strange and weird and gripping in all the right ways.

5. Lynn Flewelling, Casket of Souls 

This is actually the sixth of seven book in the Nightrunner series, so for completness, and because I hate starting in the middle of series, let me note that the first book is called Luck in the Shadows. A series of heroic fantasy novels with a bisexual spy as a protagonist? Color me interested.

6. Joan D. Vinge, The Outcasts of Heaven Belt


Vintage science fiction? Vintage science fiction!

7. John Truby, The Anatomy of Story

In an interview, he did a few years ago, the novelist Victor Lavelle recommended this as his favourite book about the craft of writing.

8. Vaslav Nijinsky, The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky, edited by Joan Acocella

The unexpurgated diary of the one of the twentieth century's greatest dancers.

9. Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust

I bought a copy of Helena (Waugh's novel about the life of the mother of the Roman emperor Constantine) a few months ago; this also sounds intriguing.

10. Joy Chant, Red Moon and Black Mountain

A high fantasy novel, now out of print, which went on my list entirely for its evocative title and beautiful cover. 

11. Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Diving into the Wreck

Exploration, salvage, and tourism of abandoned spaceships is a new to me science fiction premise, and one I think I would enjoy.

12. Ellen Klages, Passing Strange

Ellen Klages' short story collection Portable Childhoods is one of those books I recommend to people with the glittering eyes and trembling voice of an addicted fanatic. I love her work so much and look forward to reading this.

13. Emma Sterner-Radley, Snowblooded

A beautiful cover and an assassins' guild. This sounds rather fun!

14. Omaima al-Khamis, The Book Smuggler

I love historical fiction and this seems like a corker--a novel about a scribe who smuggles books around the medieval Islamic world.

15. Alan Garner, Treacle Walker

This book was added to this list due to its euphonious title and a short page count.

16. Arthur Conan Doyle, The White Company

Apparently, the creator of Sherlock Holmes also wrote Arthuriana!

17. Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers

Having watched and adored the two parts of Les Trois Mousquetaires, I want more. More. More! And what better place to get it than the original novel.

18. Alexandre Dumas, La Reine Margot

This sounds like a wild ride through a dramatic period of history.

19. Rafael Sabatini, Bellarion the Fortunate

Listen, Captain Blood, The Seahawk, and Scaramouche, are three of my favourite works of historical fiction--especially Scaramouche, which has some of the most perfect opening lines ever written. More Sabatini in my life is always a good thing.

20. Samuel Shellabarger, Prince of Foxes

The entire premise of this novel reminds me of my favourite bits of Dorothy Dunnett's House of Niccolo series.

21. Christopher Soto, Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color

I love anthologies of poetry and this one seems like a great way to encounter work that is new to me.

22. 100 Knitted Tiles

I am not sure what one does with a knitted tile--sew them together to make a blanket? Use them as coasters?--but I do love knitting squares in lots of different designs.

23. Victor Lavelle, The Ballad of Black Tom

Retellings and reimaginings of the work of H.P. Lovecraft fascinate me.

24. Lord Dunsany, The King of Elfland's Daughter

Tell me something is a classic, or especially that it is a book that fell into obscurity and has been rediscovered, and I am very likely to file it in my memory--or my blog post--as something worth reading.

25. Mervyn Peake, The Gormenghast Novels

I borrowed these from the library as a teenager and never finished them. I remember absolutely nothing of the plot other than an atmosphere of melancholy strangeness.

26. Laurie J. Marks, Fire Logic

The first of a four-book series of fantasy novels, with a unique and intriguing premise.

27. William Wright, Harvard's Secret Court: The Savage 1920 Pursuit of Campus Homosexuals

Apparently Harvard was ahead of the curve, having a Lavender Scare of its own decades before the United States government decided to get in on the act. The main source for this book was Harvard's own archives of proceedings against its students.

28. Katherine Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne

Super-Infinite

I've read the complete poetry of John Donne and I love it; it would be a great delight to learn more about the poet and his life.

29. John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

Did you know that John Steinbeck's first novel was a work of historical fiction about an early modern privateer (Henry Morgan)? I didn't either! There's another Sabatini link here, too--the titular character of Captain Blood is also based on Henry Morgan.

30. Hana Videen, The Deorhord

I loved Videen's book about daily life in early medieval England; this book, about Old English words for animals, seems equally fun.

31. Seán Hewitt and Luke Edward Hall, 300,000 Kisses: Tales of Queer Love from the Ancient World 

As I wrote a few years ago, Frank Wynn's otherwise excellent anthology Queer: LGTBQ Writing from Ancient Times to the Present, contains a gap of fifteen hundred years; 300,000 Kisses seems like a book to fill in that gap. And the illustrations look beautiful.

Monday 19 August 2024

A Diptych on the Creation of Man

A Question

 
A voice said, Look me in the stars 
And tell me truly, men of earth, 
If all the soul-and-body scars
Were not too much to pay for birth.

~ Robert Frost. Text from Archive.org

Imagines mortis the dance of death 0102 The creation of Eve The fall of man PK-P-127.375 - recto

Matins

 
Unreachable father, when we were first
exiled from heaven, you made
a replica, a place in one sense
different from heaven, being
designed to teach a lesson: otherwise
the same--beauty on either side, beauty
without alternative--Except
we didn't know what was the lesson. Left alone,
we exhausted each other. Years
of darkness followed; we took turns 
working in the garden, the first tears
filling our eyes as earth 
misted with petals, some
dark red, some flesh colored--
We never thought of you
whom we were learning to worship.
We merely knew it wasn't human nature to love
only what returns love.

~ Louise Glück, The Wild Iris (London: Carcanet, 1992), p 3

Wednesday 14 August 2024

A Diptych on Dreaming of Home

Two poems that go together when I think about my experiences of home across seven cities in three countries.

Where We Are

i envy those
who live in two places:
new york, say, and london;
wales and spain;
l.a. and paris;
hawaii and switzerland. 

there is always the anticipation
of the change, the chance that what is wrong
is the result of where you are. i have
always loved both the freshness of
arriving and the relief of leaving. with
two homes every move would be a homecoming.
i am not even considering the weather, hot
or cold, dry or wet: i am talking about hope. 

Gerald Locklin, source, Good Poems, p. 286

Stepping Out of Poetry

What would you give for one of the old yellow streetcars
rocking toward you again through the thick snow?

What would you give for the feeling of joy as you climbed
up the three iron steps and took your place by the cold window?

Oh, what would you give to pick up your stack of books
and walk down the icy path in front of the library?

What would you give for your dream
to be as clear and simple as it was then
in the dark afternoons, at the old scarred tables? 
 
~ Gerald Stern, Good Poems, p. 328

Saturday 10 August 2024

Furious Wings

The Dragon and the Undying

All night the flares go up; the Dragon sings
And beats upon the dark with furious wings;
And, stung to rage by his own darting fires,
Reaches with grappling coils from town to town;
He lusts to break the loveliness of spires,
And hurls their martyred music toppling down. 

Orphrey (trim) fragment showing St Margaret (15th Century), Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster

Yet, though the slain are homeless as the breeze,
Vocal are they, like storm-bewilder'd seas.
Their faces are the fair, unshrouded night,
And planets are their eyes, their ageless dreams.
Tenderly stooping earthward from their height,
They wander in the dusk with chanting streams,
And they are dawn-lit trees, with arms up-flung,
To hail the burning heavens they left unsung.

February 1916

Siegfried Sassoon, The War Poems (London, 1983), p. 23

Sunday 4 August 2024

Learning New Words with Lymond: D is for Decorticate

Welcome to our fourth episode of  Learning New Words with Lymond, in which I blog my way through the rare and obscure words used in Dorothy Dunnett's The Game of Kings. The first of the six books in the Lymond Chronicles, Game of Kings follows the eventful return of its eponymous character, a fictional Scottish nobleman named Francis Crawford of Lymond, to mid-sixteenth century Scotland. Described on the back of my copy as "a scapegrace of crooked felicities and murderous talents, possessed of a scholar's erudition and a tongue as wicked as rapier," Lymond is one of the great (anti)heroes of fiction, and Dunnett's writing is one of my personal touchstones: baroque, playful, savage, and dazzling intricate. Frequent use of rare and obsolete words are one of the principal ways in which which this complexity is achieved.

In these posts, I aim to enjoy my favourite sesquipedalians. What do these words mean? Why do they make sense in context? How do they enhance our understanding and enjoyment of what is happening in the story? I hope this provides me--and any fellow Dunnett fans who stumble on these posts--two opportunities.

  1. To learn new words!
  2. To bask in the beauty and complexity of Dunnett's writing.

This occasional series wends its through the alphabet from A to Z.

We continue with words beginning with the letter 'd'...

dammar

He was bearded like a Dammar pine, of the fashion of prophets and pards, one hair sitting here, another there. p. 429

A type of pine tree yielding resin; depending on the species of tree, used to make resin, varnish, or a substitute for pitch in caulking ships. The needles and branches don't look especially beard-like to me but then neither does the proverbial beard of the pard (panther). (OED)

dancetté

The moon copied on the cobbles the profile of all the new, high houses: the thatched gables and uncertain slates and the dancetté roofs; and the gutters ran in and out of the shadows like pied and silvery eels. p. 533

Another architectural term, usually used to refer to "zigzag or chevron moulding" (OED); it's found in Francis Grose's The Antiquities of Scotland to describe zigzag ornament around a door (if you've ever seen the doorways of Norman church or cathedral, you've probably seen this). It's the beauty of the gutters in the nighttime, of all things, that gets me. "Pied and silvery eels." Glorious.

decorticate

If I allowed any one of your dear old friends now on Crawfordmuir to hear this they would decorticate you like an onion, and you'd deserve it. Next time I shall inform them myself. Is that clear? p. 255 
It's clear from context that decorticate is a fancy word for 'peel'; it also means "to remove the bark, rind, or husk from; to strip of its bark." Figuratively, it is also a verb meaning "to expose," "to flay," or "to divest of what conceals" (OED). Will Scott here is getting upbraided by Lymond for attempting to meet in secret with his father (something the rest of Lymond's followers don't know about); so even though the literal meaning is clearly intended, the figurative one also applies in two different senses for the scene's two secrets.
 

decumbiture

Sitting before the fire, a sweet and ample version of pink and gold, was Molly. Divorced from the glittering background of the Ostrich, the shining hair and limpid eyes were emblems of innocence: she looked as if she had been attending decumbitures all her life. p. 295

A fancy word for a sickbed; also describes the act of taking to a sickbed, or the time at which one does so, or even just lying down in general. Also an astrological term for a figure set up when a person takes to their sickbed, which can predict whether they recover. (OED) This seems like a fun word to keep in store for the next time I come down with a terrible cold and am feeling especially vile.

dempster

Abandoning sense, revenge, and the role of complacent dempster and letting reason fly like a hag through the night wind, Richard Crawford struck off through the darkness, plunging over myrtle and bracken and torn boughs and boulders, between thorn and furze and blurred trees and low thickets, in the direction last taken by his brother. p. 454

Dempster is a medieval word for a judge; in early modern Scotland, a dempster was the clerk in the courtroom who pronounced the sentence handed down by the judge. (OED) Richard Crawford's stubborn effort to save his brother despite himself is one of my favourite sections of the novel. Also, "letting reason fly like a hag through the night wind" is a delight of a simile.

divot

"All right, but remember, although you've bought the rights of fuel, feal, and divot, I shan't be lying here like an upset sheep forever." p. 461 
I added this word to the list because divot is clearly not being used in its most common meaning, a small dent or hole. The phrase "feal and divot" is from Scottish law, "a rural servitude, importing a right in the proprietor of the dominant tenement to cut and remove turf for fences or for thatching or covering houses or the like purposes, within the dominant lands." (OED) An interesting insight into Lymond's feelings about needing his brother's care to get well.   

douce

"Don't be deceived," said Lymond with equal dryness. "That's only remorse because he bit me and I didn't bite back. He'll settle in time into a decent, douce Buccleuch." p. 460

A medieval from Norman French adjective meaning "sweet, pleasing or gentle"; in its Old French (12th century) usage, it also means "well-behaved, prudent". (OED) Having matured in Lymond's following, Will Scott has a different future in store.

dub

Dod, d'ye need a dub and a whistle? p. 510

More fun with old and obsolete meanings of words! It's the "beat of a drum; the sound of a drum when beaten." (OED) Will Scott, having twice failed to intervene in Lymond's trial, is being gently mocked by his father for his failure. 

Dumyat

"You're so small. I have something for you, my lady, but it's like Abbey Craig speaking to Dumyat. Perhaps, if you'll allow me, we should settle our differences first." p. 228

Dumyat is hill in central Scotland; Abbey Craig, nearby, is less than half its height. An utterly charming small scene between Agnes Herries, a young heiress with romantic notions of how she wants to be wooed, and her husband-to-be, who is indulging them. You don't get many moments of pure fluff and cuteness in a Dunnett novel, but this is one of them.

dwale

"And then food. Is he choosy? We could manage stavesacre and dwale, with a little fool's parsley and half a thorn apple, stewed, with toadstools." p. 368

Dwale is the late medieval and early modern name for deadly nightshade (belladonna); every single plant listed here is poisonous. Kate Somerville, speaking here to her husband about keeping Lymond captive in their house, is still angry about the theft of her family's livestock and the interrogation of her daughter.

Friday 19 July 2024

Learning New Words with Lymond: C is for Chatoyant

Welcome back to Learning New Words with Lymond, in which I blog my way through The Game of Kings, the first book of Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles, a series of six novels which follow the career and (mis)fortunes of a fictional Scottish nobleman, Francis Crawford of Lymond. Described on the back of my copy as "a scapegrace of crooked felicities and murderous talents, possessed of a scholar's erudition and a tongue as wicked as rapier," Lymond, to those of us who love him, is one of those characters who moves into our minds and never moves out, the standard by which all clever, beautiful, morally complex, multi-talented protagonists are judged and (often) found wanting. Dunnett is one of those authors I feel barely coherent about, I love her so much. The characters are great, but the writing--ah, the writing! What can I possibly say about the writing? It is baroque, playful, savage, and almost always above my head. I love it so.

In these posts, I aim to learn from Dunnett's use of rare and obscure words. What do these words mean? Why do they make sense in context? How do they enhance our understanding and enjoyment of what is happening in the story? I hope this provides me--and any fellow Dunnett fans who stumble on these posts--two opportunities.

  1. To improve my vocabulary! I want to be able to imitate the depth and complexity I admire in older writing in my own work. One way to do this is to learn new words.
  2. To bask in the beauty and complexity of Dunnett's writing.

This occasional series wends its through the alphabet from A to Z.

We continue with words beginning with the letter 'c'...

cacodemon

Credit the boy with more strength of mind than a newly gutted lamp-wick. Or are you maybe not so much worried about Will as anxious to put a bit of rope around the yellow-headed cacodemon's neck? p 165

From the Greek, κακοδαίμων, an evil genius (noun or adjective). In English, from the late sixteenth century, a noun meaning "evil spirit". From the early nineteenth century onward, the word was also also used in a medical context to refer to nightmares. In astrology, it is "the Twelfth House (or Scheme) in a figure of the Heavens, so called from its baleful signification." This last use is seventeenth century but too fun not to include. (OED.) Wat Buccleuch is the speaker here; unlike Lymond himself, his speech is typically rather plain, if peppered with lots of Scots dialect. This is a rare and delightful bit of recherché wordplay for him.

calcination, cibation

Calcination, dissolution, separation, conjunction, putrefaction, congelation, cibation, sublimation, fermentation, exaltation, multiplication, and projection," chanted Johnnie, his dark face ferociously solemn. "These and none others are the twelve processes." p. 326 

Calcination is "the action or process of calcining; reduction by fire to a ‘calx’, powder, or friable substance; the subjecting of any infusible substance to a roasting heat." It can also be used as a synonym for processes which produce similar results. More broadly, it can also simply refer to burning something to ashes. Lastly, it can be something in "a calcined condition" or "that which has been calcined, a calcined product or ‘calcinate’". It comes from the Classical Latin noun calcinātio which became the Medieval Latin verb calcināre. (OED)

While calcination became a word widely used outside of alchemy, cibation seems to have stayed firmly inside of it. It's defined as the "name of the seventh process, ‘feeding the matter’". And of course, it comes seventh on Johnnie Bullo's list, as a demonstration that, like any good conman, he knows enough to convince. Cibation can also simply refer to "taking food, feeding." In the process of looking up words, it's the first one I've seen that is simply marked as "obsolete", with no statistics given on the frequency of its use. (OED)

calyx

The empty calyx he was attacking made infinitesimal efforts to avoid him; to refuse his services; to deny his proximity; but he persevered. Hatred was life; shame was life; humiliation was life; the trivial movements Lymond was making in his extremity were life. Richard Crawford was a very stubborn man. p. 456

A word from seventeenth century botany for the green leaves which cover a flower bud before it blooms, which can also be applied to similar parts of other living things. The etymology is worth quoting in full

Latin calyx, < Greek κάλυξ outer covering of a fruit, flower, or bud; shell, husk, pod, pericarp (from root of καλύπτειν to cover). In medieval Latin and in the Romanic languages, this word has run together in form with the much commoner Latin word calix ‘cup, goblet, drinking vessel’; and the two are to a great extent treated as one by modern scientific writers, so that the calyx of a flower is commonly explained as the ‘flower-cup’, and the form calyx and its derivatives are applied to many cup-like organs, which have nothing to do with the calyx of a flower, but are really meant to be compared to a calix or cup. (OED)

If you are a normal, sane person, you may here be wondering, if she meant cup why didn't she just say that? Vessel would also do! But there is something so elegant, so fragile, about the word calyx that cup or vessel just doesn't cover. Lymond, in this scene, is at his lowest point--severely injured, he has made a fruitless effort to escape the care of the elder brother who isn't sure whether he wants to save him or kill him or save him so he can kill him. 

When I first read the Lymond books, I was younger than the protagonist, and I imprinted on him much the same way I did as a teenager encountering the figure of Peter Wimsey for the first time. He was captivating. All his wrongs could be justified. Rereading it now, almost a decade older than Lymond, it is Richard Crawford's unflashy, inflexible, uncompromising decency, that draws me in.

canescent

To the French, dropping like canescent frost on the discreet slopes about Haddington, it was a small, acute campaign ordered by His Most Christian Majesty out of a fine warm regard for Scotland and a need to spit in the Protector's other eye. p. 451

Another word that comes from Latin; in this case, the present participle, cānēscentem of of the verb cānēscere, to grow hoary. The OED defines it as "Rather hoary; greyish or dull white, like the down or hairs on the leaves of plants", but provides only one citation of it in use, from a dictionary published in 1847. It occurs approximately 0.01 times per million words in modern English, leaving me to once again reflect on how reading Dorothy Dunnett is like winning the rare-word lottery. This is another one to bring back, especially since it sounds so close to something that ought to mean "shiny", and doesn't.

cappers

The fleshers and brewers and smiths and weavers and skinners and saddlers and salters and cappers and masons and cutlers and fletchers and plasterers and armourers and porters and water carriers, and the one-eye man who had called at Bogle House selling fumigating pans. p. 138

"Duh!" I exclaimed to myself when I looked this one up. A capper is just an old word for a cap-maker. By the early nineteenth century, this seems to have fallen out of use, and other uses, including an accomplice in a game of chance or rigged auction, came to predominate. (OED) Someone tell Scott Lynch, it's a word that would suit his Gentlemen Bastards series splendidly.

caracole

And, rising in the saddle, Lennox's men with whoops and cracking of whips cantered down the road towards the hill; and the herd, after much eye-rolling and heavy breathing and ponderous caracole, heaved itself around and trotted back the way it had--supposedly--come. The citizens of Cumberland gambolled after it. p. 200

As a noun, this is a turn or wheel to the right, executed on horseback. It's a borrowing from French to refer specifically to wheeling left and right in a zigzag course; it's also a verb, meaning to execute caracol(e)s, or more generally "to caper about". This is the first word I've seen where the dictionary-makers permitted themselves the luxury of snark. "Many writers have used the word without any clear notion of its meaning". (OED) And while Dunnett is describing the movement of a herd of stolen cattle and sheep, not horsemen, the word perfectly captures the nature of their movement. This is one of my favourite scenes in the book, not least because it showcases Lymond's brilliance as a strategist, Will Scott's growing maturity, and several characters (among them my beloved Richard Crawford) completely losing their tempers.

carking

"Then you supposed wrong," said Lymond shortly. "I've had a damned carking afternoon. A Moslem would blame my Ifrit, a Buddist explain the papingo was really my own great-grandmother, and a Christian, no doubt, call it the vengeance of the Lord. As a plain, inoffensive heathen, I call it bloody annoying." p. 160 

From context, one would guess that this means "irritating", but it actually means something more like distressing, wearing, toiling, or anxious. (OED) Lymond when thwarted tends to resort to parallel syntax and learned references as a means of relieving his feelings, which is immensely entertaining.

catafalque

From his low and castellated rampart he caught a glimpse of a yellow head. He raised himself higher. At the same moment Lymond stepped back before Lennox, who was shouting abuse: this brought him halfway along the table with his right side to the balcony and the catafalque with Acheson on his left. p. 430

Oh, this is a good one! A catafalque is a stage or platform built to hold a coffin or effigy, or a temporary wooden structure used in funeral ceremonies to represent a tomb or cenotaph. (OED) Here, it seems to be used as a straightforward synonym for tomb. Dunnett never uses a one-syllable word where polysyllables will do; though table and tomb have a nice parallelism, there's the significant fact that Acheson is not (yet) dead, so the fact that he is lying on a structure that only represents a tomb is perfect.

catalysis

Babies bounced and abounded in the Scott household; babies with mouths round and adhesive as lampreys; babies like Pandean pipes, of diminishing size and resonant voices; babies rendering torture and catalysis among the animate, the inanimate and the comatose. The Buccleuchs themselves were totally immune. p 163

A word derived from the Greek κατάλυσις, meaning dissolution. Used in seventeenth century English to mean "dissolution, destruction, ruin", a usage which is now rare if not obsolete (it's now mostly used as a synonym for a process in chemistry that also goes by the name of contact action). OED

cataphract

So he quoted Latin, and Lymond, breaking painfully from his numb cataphract, retaliated. p. 522 

Literally, armour or a coat of mail, or a soldier in full armour. (OED) Here, Lymond's armour is figurative--Henry Lauder is the one person in Game of Kings who gives Lymond a fair fight in a battle of wits. If I have to rank my favourite scenes in the novel Lymond's trial is definitely near the top. Why? The descriptions of how Lymond speaks. They are an absolute masterclass in the impact of a few well-chosen words.

Casuistry

What are we discussing, a test case in casuistry or my personal complexity of habits? p. 210

Conversations between Lymond and Will Scott always delight; this is a particularly good one. Casuistry is "The science, art, or reasoning of the casuist; that part of Ethics which resolves cases of conscience, applying the general rules of religion and morality to particular instances in which ‘circumstances alter cases’, or in which there appears to be a conflict of duties. Often (and perhaps originally) applied to a quibbling or evasive way of dealing with difficult cases of duty; sophistry." (OED)

chabouk

In that case she's probably in the room at the end of the passage with a chabouk. Or is it locked? p. 368
Sometimes spelled chawbuck, this is simply a horsewhip, coming from chābuk, which is the word for horsewhip in both Persian and Urdu. (OED) Philippa Somerville--the she of this passage--really does not like Lymond.

chatoyant

The familiar, chatoyant glint was in Lymond's eyes. p. 173 

Oh, let's bring this one into wider usage! Have you ever wanted for a single word to describe the look of a cat's eye glowing in the dark, or a light that has a similar quality? Mostly, this is an adjective "having a changeable, undulating, or floating lustre, like that of a cat's eye in the dark," but it is occasionally also used as a noun, referring directly to this sort of lustre itself. French-speakers may already know this one--it's a direct lift from that language. OED

chiel

Jamie! Tell me! Ye havena had an encoonter with a sleekit-spoken chiel...p 223

A Scots word for "any man without reference to age; a lad, fellow, chap. Frequently used contemptuously or affectionately." OED

chub

When you know the art of living, you don't look for death, or half-death; you don't hide in a hole like a chub. p. 272

A chub is "a river fish (Cyprinus or Leuciscus cephalus) of the Carp family (Cyprinidæ), also called the Chevin. It is a thick fat coarse-fleshed fish, of a dusky green colour on the upperparts and silvery-white beneath, frequenting deep holes, especially about the roots of trees, and in warm weather rising near the surface." OED. This comes from a conversation between Lymond and Margaret, Countess of Lennox, and it sets up an absolute wrecking ball of a simile four pages later.
 

cobalt

How may a breed freshen except under mutation? How improve its whiteness, except by admitting a rogue cobalt to its meadows? p. 540 

One of the fun things about paying attention to rare and unusual words is discovering completely new meanings of words I already know well. I know cobalt as a deep, rich blue but that doesn't make sense in the context of the passage, which comes from a scene where Sybilla, Lymond's mother, thinks about the fate of her three children in terms of a nursery rhyme about lambs. Cobalt here seems to refer to a sheep the colour of the raw metal itself, which is silvery-white. Contextually, I thought it might be a specific type of sheep, but it doesn't seem to be, although, in the most stunning example of a false friend I have yet found in this project, sheep and cattle do suffer from cobalt deficiency

cobble

Her friends and contemporaries of church and nobility, the suitors of the Court of Session, the powerful of both sexes at Court, had all felt the impact of the Dowager's fear, and many of them had tried to help because she was Sybilla, and people would lend her a needle to cobble the moon to her gates if she asked for it. p. 540

I can't help but think there's a specific literary reference hiding here but I am unable to find it. Cobbling (mending or joining roughly or clumsily--OED) the moon to a gate isn't the first thing that springs to mind as a metaphor for an impossible task but that's clearly how it is here being used.

colletic

If he had expired in a paste of perspiration, nobody would have noticed. The colletic stare of guards and Englishmen alike was on the sweating, subsaltive hands and on the grinning tarots: the impious Papess, the lascivious Lover, the jeering Fool. p. 521 

And in looking this one up in the dictionary, we learn a new polsyllabic word for glue (agglutinant); the word itself is an adjective meaning "having the property of joining as with glue." (OED) Isn't it great? Saying their stares were glued on the cards and the hands of the players slows the sentence down; saying only that the audience stared doesn't convey the intensity with which they watched. The tarot game keeps climbing to the top of my list of favourite Game of Kings scenes.

concamerate

But I prefer my truth flat and not concamerate, even with the most dulcet spring of famous rhetoric in spate beneath. p. 522

A rare verb, meaning to arch or to vault, or to set in an arch or a vault (another meaning is "to divide into chambers"). (OED) The adjectival form in the dictionary is concamerated. Concamerate appears in the rarest of OED's frequency bands, which are words that appear fewer than 0.001 times per million words. They are typically highly specialized technical vocabulary; concamerate is an architectural term.

contes

The men watching, unable to breathe, heard the click and clash and slither of contes, froissèes, beating and binding: saw first one man and then the other bring his art to the pitch of freeing his blade for the ultimate perfection, only to bow before the other's defence. p. 419 

From context, this is clearly a term for a specific move in fencing, but even attempting to search for "contes, froissèes, beating and binding" stumps Google altogether. Trying to find "contes" on fencing websites is fruitless; in our text-matching world, one is simply directed to pages containing the words "contest" or "contestant", or, if searching for the singular, "content." Eheu, but raise a glass to Dorothy Dunnett's local librarian, who must surely have passed that rare book on medieval swordplay around the break room when it came in for her favourite patron.

corium

"It isn't quite conscience so much as horrified admiration," said Lymond. "From cuticle to corium in four days." p. 379

Corium is "the true skin or derma under the epidermis" (OED), a word which the dictionary thinks is nineteenth century, though the earliest examples of cuticle, the outer layer of the skin (dermis), is seventeenth. Would someone in 1547 or thereabouts have known the skin had inner and outer layers? Let's not worry about that, and instead delight in a marvelously toothsome way to say someone has gotten under your skin. 

corybantic

 The argument became corybantic and public; it blared; it stopped. p.166

"Of, pertaining to, or resembling the Corybantes or their rites". (OED) We then have to chase down the word Corybant, who is "a priest of the Phrygian worship of Cybele, which was performed with noisy and extravagant dances." (OED) Janet and Wat Buccleuch argue as one of their love languages, but I love how this silly word for loud hints that their argument is somewhat staged, or at least performative.

corymb

There was no room left to stand and no air to inhale, but the light beat down on a swaying corymb of heads, and shone on necks craning with a nervous, avid tension like beasts at a water hole. p. 533
A corymb is "a cluster of ivy-berries or grapes"; but here, it seems to be used in its botanical sense, of a raceme where lower flower-stalks are proportionally longer than upper ones, so all the flowers appear at the same height (something like a stalk of baby's breath in a floral bouquet, perhaps). (OED)

cribble

You may set fire to churches and cribble empires through your bloody fingers, but the one irretrievable mistake is to misjudge a fellow human being. p. 324 

A lovely old word for "to pass through a sieve, to sift". (OED). I love the alliteration of "churches" and "cribble"; I love even more what Lymond's interactions with the Somerville family (he's speaking here to Gideon Somerville) reveal about his character, flaws, and motivations.

cushats

The cushats had long since returned sidling to their roosts. As stillness fell, they settled too, with frilled feathers and the rasp of dry feet. p. 438

A Scots or northern English word for wood pigeons or ring doves. Which could be gathered from the fact that Lymond and his brother are in a dovecote and the birds have come back, but it's fun to learn that the word comes directly from Old English. (OED)

Lastly...

We all know "The Game of Kings in Fifteen Minutes", right? If not, go read it, immediately, and tell all your Dunnett-loving friends.

A Note on Links

Because I work at a university, I have access to the Oxford English Dictionary, and indeed the entire Oxford Reference series of dictionaries and encyclopedias. It is a principle of this blog to try to use and link to sources that anyone can access, but the OED has features--like the ability to explore the etymology, frequency, history of use, and meanings of words, that free online dictionaries simply don't have. My plan is to quote relevant bits of entries, and to include open access links wherever possible, so that anyone who wants to do so can geek out with me, paywalls be damned.