Seldom-Used Words

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Handley, thanks for the link to the diblber a good-looking device for planting seeds.

Naoko, I have a long trowel, too, with a flexible grip handle that does not hurt my palm quite so much as a metal or wooden one. I do love the innovations in gardening implements.

peripatetic(1) - noun 1. cap: ARISTOTELIAN 2. PEDESTRAIN, INTINERANT 3. pl: movments or journeyings hither and thither

peripatetic(2) - adj 1. cap: ARISTOTELIAN 2. of or relating to walking; ITINERANT

peripeteia - noun a sudden or unexpected reversal of circumstances or situation esp. in a literary work

peripety - noun PERIPETEIA
 
Handley, thanks for the link to the dibber a good-looking device for planting seeds.

peripatetic(1) - noun 1. cap: ARISTOTELIAN 2. PEDESTRIAN, ITINERANT 3. pl: movements or journeyings hither and thither

peripatetic(2) - adj 1. cap: ARISTOTELIAN 2. of or relating to walking; ITINERANT

I fear that definition lacks a certain bit of detail. Peripatetic refers to Aristotle's habit of walking whilst he taught. You'll appreciate it made taking notes somewhat difficult.
 
canaille

Here's one I'd never encountered until I saw it the other day in a book I'm reading.

canaille noun (the canaille) derogatory

the common people; the masses: the haughty contempt of a grandee sneering at the canaille.
ORIGIN French, from Italian canaglia ‘pack of dogs,’ from cane ‘dog.’
 
pterosaur noun, from the Greek pterosauros, meaning "winged lizard")--any of a large order of flying reptiles that existed from approximately 220 million to 65 million years ago
 
Handley, yes, I understood the implication of walking and thinking at the same time, something I also like to do, bu it was the thrid entry or peripeteia that got my attention and vaguely seemed related, though, maybe not.

perionychium - noun the tissue bordering the root and sides of a fingernail or toenail
 
Welcome, Lia Monde. I know the feeling of that word.

Here is one I missed, but want to include, especially here at LIT;

periphrasis - noun 1. use of longer phrasing in place of a possible shorter and plainer form of expression: CIRCUMLOCUTION 2. an instance of periphrasis
 
Welcome, Lia Monde. I know the feeling of that word.

Here is one I missed, but want to include, especially here at LIT;

periphrasis - noun 1. use of longer phrasing in place of a possible shorter and plainer form of expression: CIRCUMLOCUTION 2. an instance of periphrasis

Would that be the opposite of Obfuscation ?
 
Would that be the opposite of Obfuscation ?

No. A synonym of it.

An example of periphrasis from Winston Churchill:

It cannot in the opinion of His Majesty's Government be classified as slavery in the extreme acceptance of the word without some risk of terminological inexactitude.

Speech in the House of Commons, 22 February 1906

What he meant was: "You can't really call it slavery without lying." but he couldn't use the words "lying" nor accuse his opponent of being a "liar" without breaking Parliamentary rules.

But by using periphrasis - he did call his opponent a liar, and he got away with it at the time. But it is a well-known Churchillian quote. Hansard, the Parliamentary record, and posterity knew exactly what Churchill meant.
 
As the snow melts from the hard green daffodil spikes in the garden (giving way to thunder, lightning, torrential rain, hailstones and currently bright sunshine and a high wind with more torrential rain forecast shortly), my thoughts turn lightly to Spring and ... flowers!

Passiflora

http://www.passionflow.co.uk/index.htm

passiflora-caerulea-flower.jpg
 
Very lovely, Naoko, thanks for sharing the picuture.

Thank you, Og, for the perfect example of periphrasis.

Just for the record;

circumlocution - noun 1. the use of an unnecessarily large number of words to express an idea 2. evasion in speech
 
...

Just for the record;

circumlocution - noun 1. the use of an unnecessarily large number of words to express an idea 2. evasion in speech

For circumlocution in Literotica you could convey they idea "He fucked her" like this:

They went to bed, but not to sleep: he engaged in carnal intercourse with her without prior benefit of the nuptial rites...
 
To prepare my mind for period writing, I often read works published in the 1800s. I find they used a great deal of periphrasis and circumlocution to get their ideas across. Run-on sentences were the norm, and very lengthy ones at that. I must admit, I adore wordiness, preferably in prose. My love affair with whoever Shakespeare was continues and shall not be abated. Truly, neither do I speak nor write like a modern person, and that makes one stand out from the crowd, especially here in America. LOL

periodicity - noun the quality, state, or fact of being regularly recurrent
 
To prepare my mind for period writing, I often read works published in the 1800s. I find they used a great deal of periphrasis and circumlocution to get their ideas across. Run-on sentences were the norm, and very lengthy ones at that. I must admit, I adore wordiness, preferably in prose. My love affair with whoever Shakespeare was continues and shall not be abated. Truly, neither do I speak nor write like a modern person, and that makes one stand out from the crowd, especially here in America. LOL

periodicity - noun the quality, state, or fact of being regularly recurrent

It's such a pity that Word [well my version, 2003, anyway] does not like long sentences.
 
Woody Allen, in his writing for Midnight in Paris, manages to pull my sheets with ease. Here is the quote, which made me think hard about myself;

“Nostalgia is denial - denial of the painful present… the name for this denial is golden age thinking - the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one one's living in - it’s a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present.”

Yes, that is me, in a nutshell. LOL

perimorph - noun a crystal of one species enclosing one of another species
 
I have few problems with Word, but if I do, I just hit ignore and it does. LOL

perilune- noun the point in the path of a body orbiting the moon that is nearest to the center of the moon
 
For circumlocution in Literotica you could convey they idea "He fucked her" like this:

They went to bed, but not to sleep: he engaged in carnal intercourse with her without prior benefit of the nuptial rites...

That would be from the James Michener School of Writing:
Rule #1
If something can be said in five hundred words, use twenty-six thousand.


It is, of course, the antithesis of the Ernest Hemingway School of Writing.

 
No matter how one writes, it is important to keep doing it.

perihelion - noun the point in the path of a planet or other celestial body that is nearest to the sun
 


fueldraulic adj., a portmanteau of fuel and hydraulic meaning the use of fuel as a substitute for hydraulic fluid.





Here I am reading an article about cost overruns on the singlemost expensive contract ever let by the U.S. government and a neologism jumps off the page. I must say that while the concept is novel, it doesn't sound particularly safe.

...Test flights of the Marine version, the F-35B, were stopped after a pilot aborted a takeoff because of a flaw in the propulsion system made by the Pratt & Whitney unit of United Technologies Corp. The incident involved a line in the plane’s fueldraulic system, which saves weight by using jet fuel instead of the customary hydraulic fluid to lubricate mechanical parts. ...



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-28/f-35b-grounding-linked-to-part-flaw-pratt-whitney-says.html


 
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