Learning New Words With Lymond is back! This series wends its way through the alphabet in an attempt
to understand and appreciate the intersection of word choice and
character development in the work of the Scottish historical novelist Dorothy
Dunnett. By thinking about how and why Dunnett does what she does with words, I aim to become more inventive, playful, and precise in my own use of language. Or, as Ellen Kushner put it,
"Ever since I first read them in college, as a writer I've been in
dialogue with the Lymond books...I kept trying to figure out,
'How did she just do that?' I learned a lot." ~ "All the Writers You Love Probably Love Dorothy Dunnett," Alyssa Dawn Johnson, NPR
We continue our journey through The Game of Kings with words beginning with the letters 'h,' 'i', and 'l'...
hagioscopic
"You have an entrancing and hagioscopic view of my character that is entirely your own." p. 298
Ever needed a adjective that describes someone (or something) with a small and limited view of a much larger whole? Enter hagioscopic, from the noun, hagioscope, which is an opening or window that allows Christian worshipers to see the elevation of the Host during the sacrament of the Eucharist. (OED) We the readers, together with Lymond's sister in law Mariotta, to whom this comment is directed, have a very hagioscopic view of his character at this point in the narrative.
Hanno
"Unless like Hanno you wish to sail by streams of fire. Unbuckle your sword. The suicide impulse is strong in the air." p. 336
Lymond displays here his classical education. Hanno is the hero of an ancient Greek text called the Periplus which recounts his leadership of a large expedition of Carthaginian explorers and settlers along the Atlantic coast of Africa, c. 480 BCE. Towards the end of the journey, the party encountered a land where streams of fire fell into the sea. (Dictionary of African
Biography, Oxford, 2012).
Heliades
Despite almost tearful threats from Bowes, he sat amber-headed in the April sunlight, melting as the tears of the Heliades, and tore them to shreds. p. 315
The word play here is typical Dunnett--the Heliades were the daughters of the Greek son-god Helios, whose tears, when their brother Phaethon tried and failed to drive the chariot of the sun across the sky, fell into the river where he died and became amber (Wikipedia). One of the sources of humour is surprise--after such an innocent-seeming description, Lymond's subsequent words and actions are a delicious contrast.
Hippocrenes
"Did you do that?" snapped the Lord Lieutenant, and jerked a finger towards Acheson's prone body. Lymond turned his head. "Gushing Hippocrenes at every joint. No. Strictly speaking, the blame belongs to a strawberry roan." p. 427
Hippocrene (no s) was in mythology the spring of the Muses, said to inspire creativity in those who drank from it; by extension, the word means creative inspiration or a source thereof (OED). Lymond improvises brilliantly under pressure several times during this scene, with both words and weapons.
imbrocatta
In the middle of an imbrocatta he dropped his left hand, exposing his whole flank momentarily to Lymond's right blade. p. 417
Finally, I found the historical fencing resource I was looking for! I once saw a post, somewhere on social media, about how intensely annoying it is that those invaluable late-1990s/early 2000's era websites, where some passionate enthusiast collected information on some obscure topic in minute detail without pictures, are rarely surfaced by modern search engines. Here is one such: an amazing glossary of historic fencing terms. Thus, what Richard is doing is an "attack over the adversary's blade, hand or dagger. It travels in a downward
direction with the knuckles up." It looks--according to the Carolina Historic Fencing Association--something like this:
Surely there must be HEMA enthusiasts who are also Dunnett fans? My faith in Lady Dunnett's research prowess is sufficiently profound that I am sure her description reflects a realistic fight, but I would be interested to see how someone with actual knowledge of swordfighting would respond to this scene. Also, I would be wildly curious to see how a Bob Anderson-level fight choreographer would stage this scene and interpret the character work this fight does.
insifflating
It was not in the mind of Lord Grey, riding his bones loose between town and town, insifflating the precious troops and horses, the pikes and powder and footmen, the rolls and matches and demilances and oil and flour and money, the working tools and men, men, and more men into the feverish maw of the fort. p. 421
More usually spelled insufflate, this verb means "to blow or breathe in"; during certain Christian ceremonies, the celebrant sometimes blows on a person or thing to imitate the breath of the Holy Spirit (OED). Here, the word is used in an extended sense of "taking in," but the literal mean, "breathing in," also evokes what all this activity in the height of summer might smell like.
inspissate
The world vanished in a bloody mist, reappeared inspissate with pain, disappeared. Playful, inhuman fingers rested on his collar, hooked below it, and methodically began to flay his head against the high gloss of the tiles. p. 129
Marked as obsolete in the OED; means simply "thickened." (OED)
As a verb, it means either to thicken or condense, or to become thick
or dense. One of the many pleasures of Dunnett's writing is how she
gives incredibly detailed descriptions of violence (here we see Lymond
systematically--in the modern parlance--beating the crap out of Sir
Andrew Hunter) without ever slowing down the narrative.
Live footage of me reading a fight scene in Game of Kings
Kassidas
"Go back and lie down. I don't want your coddled features singing Kassidas over me." p. 351
Initially, I though this was a misspelling of Kaddish, a Jewish prayer sanctifying the name of God; one form of which is associated with mourning the dead. It might also be a variant spelling of qasida, a "classical Arabic or Persian monorhyme poem in uniform metre,
consisting of ten or more distichs set in a usually tripartite episodic
structure, frequently with a panegyric or elegiac theme." (OED)
lapping
Will was ready for lapping. He picked up the waxed thread and glanced at the ruined Peel Tower, their present headquarters, which he controlled during Lymond's current absence. p. 98
Will Scott seems to be maintaining his bow by wrapping it with waxed thread. (OED) Rather than describe what the character is doing, Dunnett focuses on what he is thinking, which gives us a wonderful insight into the contrast between what Scott thinks he knows and how little he actually does.
Leibethra
"God, I've whined for ten minutes. Bury me at Leibethra, where the nightingale sings." p. 460
In mythology, Leibethra was where Orpheus was buried. Nightingales sang over his grave. (Wikipedia; also referenced in the Dorothy Dunnett Companion, vol 1, p. 262). This passage is from one of the many conversations between Lymond and his brother Richard during the former's convalescence. The development of their relationship and the revelation of their shared history is one of my favourite parts of Game of Kings.
lithless
He had seen these tarots several times in Scot's possession since he had come to Edinburgh. They were gruesome, Gothic, and graced with a kind of lithless malevolence all their own. p. 512
Lith is an old Scots word meaning a limb or body part--by extension, lithless means stiff or inert (Dictionary of the Scots Language). "Lithless malevolence" has a wonderfully evocative sound--I can picture the kind of grim and terrifying fifteenth century art that would have adorned Scott's cards.
lockfast
Instead, he bent his mind to weaving a fabric of steel: a case so massive, so intellectually secure, so lockfast that no man, however fluent and however gifted, should break it. p. 529
Not a hard word to guess in context, but still so delightful I had to include it on this list. It, too, is Scots, meaning "fastened by a lock, shut and locked, secured under lock and key against interference" (Dictionary of the Scots Language). Repetition in writing has fallen out of fashion, hasn't it? Most recent novels in the swashbuckling style would not allow the three parallel clauses beginning with so to qualify a single noun ("case") let alone the twice-repeated "however". There is a subtle, but important, difference between "however fluent and gifted" and "however fluent and however gifted."
