Friday word: Micawber
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Kafkaesque [kahf-kuh-esk]
adjective:
1 of, relating to, or suggestive of Franz Kafka or his writings
2 having a nightmarishly complex, bizarre, or illogical quality
Examples:
And yet to choose the right one, shoppers must navigate a Kafkaesque maze. (Steven Kurutz, Mattress shopping can be confusing, Herald-Tribune, October 2014)
In fact, to survive in this system, one has to be an expert in camouflaging and hiding from the system. So, let’s dive deeper into this Kafkaesque process, in which the aim is not to learn how to avoid bureaucracy but how people manage to get bureaucracy done. (Amna Hashmi, The rise of bureaucratic cartels, The Express Tribune, June 2024)
For some reason this has less a distancing effect than one of increased intimacy. It's one of the rules of his Kafkaesque game of alienation with the reader; almost as if he's daring us to become involved, or to resist becoming involved. (M John Harrison, Posthumous Stories by David Rose - review, The Guardian, December 2013)
Even at their most whimsical, in some ways, the film's magical realist touches aren't far off from the reality of the US immigration system, where Kafkaesque absurdities abound. (Catherine E Shoichet, This veteran actor plays an immigration lawyer in a new movie. In real life he's fighting his own case, CNN, March 2024)
It is a Kafkaesque, sealed universe in which nothing is, as it appears to be. (Sam Vaknin, After the Rain)
Origin:
1947, resembling such situations as are explored in the fiction of Franz Kafka (1883-1924), German-speaking Jewish novelist born in Prague, Austria-Hungary. The surname is Czech German, literally 'jackdaw,' and is imitative. (Online Etymology Dictionary)
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was a Czech-born German-language writer whose surreal fiction vividly expressed the anxiety, alienation, and powerlessness of the individual in the 20th century. The opening sentence of his 1915 story 'The Metamorphosis' has become one of the most famous in Western literature (“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect”), while in his novel The Trial, published a year after his death, a young man finds himself caught up in the mindless bureaucracy of the law after being charged with a crime that is never named. So deft was Kafka’s prose at detailing nightmarish settings in which characters are crushed by nonsensical, blind authority, that writers began using his name as an adjective a mere 16 years after his death. Although many other literary eponyms, from Austenian to Homeric, exist and are common enough, Kafkaesque gets employed more than most and in a wide variety of contexts, leading to occasional charges that the word has been watered down and given a lack of specificity due to overuse. (Merriam-Webster)
braggadocio [brag-uh-doh-shee-oh]
noun:
1 empty boasting; bragging
2 a boasting person; braggart
Examples:
Cruz spins these operations into digital content ranging from tips for aspiring investors to plain old-fashioned yacht-flaunting braggadocio. (Michael Friedrich, The Landlords of Social Media Seem Happy to Play the Villain, The New York Times Magazine, October 2023)
And yet among the endless braggadocio and machismo there is something quite touching, even charming, about his intense relationship with himself. Unlike, say, Cristiano Ronaldo, the vanity comes with an appreciation of the absurd. (Andrew Anthony, Adrenaline by Zlatan Ibrahimović review - he doesn't just talk a good game, The Guardian, August 2022)
There was bluster, bombast and beer for his horses and for those who hoisted a red Solo cup. And there were tender, deeply romantic ballads as well as braggadocio, seasoned with a taste of humor. (Jon Bream, Remembering Toby Keith: Bluster, beer and horse sense, Star Tribune, Febriary 2024)
The braggadocio aspect is important: a successful but modest man is ordinarily not called a k'nocker. A k'nocker is someone who works crossword puzzles - with a pen (especially if someone is watching). (Leo Rosten, The New Joys of Yiddish: Completely Updated)
Origin:
1590, coined by Spenser as the name of his personification of vainglory ('Faerie Queene', ii.3), from brag, with augmentative ending from Italian words then in vogue in English. In general use by 1594 for 'an empty swaggerer'; of the talk of such persons, from 1734. (Online Etymology Dictionary)
Though Braggadocio is not as well-known as other fictional characters like Pollyanna, the Grinch, or Scrooge, in lexicography he holds a special place next to them as one of the many characters whose name has become an established word in English. The English poet Edmund Spenser originally created Braggadocio as a personification of boasting in his epic poem The Faerie Queene. As early as 1594, about four years after the poem was published, English speakers began using the name as a general term for any blustering blowhard. The now more common use of braggadocio, referring to the talk or behavior of such 'windy cockalorums', developed in the early 18th century. (Merriam-Webster)
pandemonium [pan-duh-moh-nee-uhm]
noun:
1 wild uproar or unrestrained disorder; tumult or chaos.
2 a place or scene of riotous uproar or utter chaos.
Examples:
Those photos of Cassidy hoisting the Stanley Cup say it all: The Golden Knights’ third coach led Las Vegas’ NHL team to the promised land, fulfilling the prophecy and sending this town into total pandemonium. (Readers' Choice - Best Coach: Bruce Cassidy, Las Vegas Weekly, August 2023)
Residents and parents at the school called the previous situation 'pandemonium', saying cars used to 'fly down' to drop kids off for another school over the road. (Jack Fifield, Glorious English summer hustle has been an Ashes rush like no other, The Oldham Times, June 2023)
It's official: The shirt that turned the actor Colin Firth into a heartthrob - and helped fuel the continuing global Jane Austen pandemonium - is coming to the United States. (Sarah Schmelling, The Darcy Shirt, a Tour Rider, The New Yorker, May 2016)
In an instant pandemonium reigned, for the heavy boulder had mowed down a score of the pursuers, breaking arms and legs in its meteoric descent. (Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Monster Men)
There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why - when it did not seem worth while to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead; when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation. (Kate Chopin, The Awakening)
Origin:
1667, Pandæmonium, in 'Paradise Lost' the name of the palace built in the middle of Hell, 'the high capital of Satan and all his peers,' and the abode of all the demons; coined by John Milton (1608-1674) from Greek pan- 'all' + Late Latin daemonium 'evil spirit,' from Greek daimonion 'inferior divine power,' from daimōn 'lesser god'.
Transferred sense 'place of uproar and disorder' is from 1779; that of 'wild, lawless confusion' is from 1865. (Online Etymology Dictionary)
When John Milton needed a name for the gathering place of all demons for Paradise Lost, he turned to the classics as any sensible 17th-century writer would. Pandæmonium, as the capital of Hell is known in the epic poem, combines the Greek prefix pan-, meaning 'all', with the Late Latin daemonium, meaning 'evil spirit'. (Daemonium itself traces back to the far more innocuous Greek word daímōn, meaning 'spirit' or 'divine power'.) Over time, Pandæmonium (or Pandemonium) came to designate all of hell and was used as well for earthbound dens of wickedness and sin. By the late-18th century, the word implied a place or state of confusion or uproar, and from there, it didn’t take long for pandemonium to become associated with states of utter disorder and wildness. (Merriam-Webster)
grimoire [greem-wahr]
noun:
a manual of magic or witchcraft used by witches and sorcerers; a magician's manual for invoking demons and the spirits of the dead
Examples:
Necronomicon, or the 'book of dead names' that Montrose refers to isn't actually a real book - unless you count the 2008 collection of Lovecraft's short stories published under that title. It's a 'grimoire' invented by by Lovecraft in his 1924 story The Hound. (Ellen E Jones, Lovecraft Country recap: season one, episode two - have you guys not seen Get Out?, The Guardian, August 2020)
E'ilor dwells in a large cavern deep beneath a small farming village in the Severn Valley, and possesses vine-like tentacles which can be used for capturing prey or offering communal sacrifices. Both of these deities receive brief mention in the multi-volume grimoire Revelations of Glaaki. (Ramsey Campbell deities, The Annex)
The book was his Grimoire, a collection of magical writings. The pages were all different sizes and thicknesses, which made them difficult to turn. Some were of parchment, others were of vellum, and some were thin sheets of leather. It was the strangest book in the world. (Richard Carpenter, Catweazle: Novelisation of the 1969 TV Series)
And vain the charm recovered
From out the daemon-hovered,
Worm-travelled page of pentacled grimoire.
(Clark Ashton Smith, 'O Golden-Tongued Romance')
The first object that caught his attention, was a large grimoire, or book of spells, which lay open on the philosopher's desk. (Charles Mackay, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions)
1849, from French grimoire, altered from grammaire 'incantation; grammar' (Online Etymology Dictionary)
A grimoire is a book of magic that may contain spells, conjurations, instructions for divination and the construction of amulets, and other secret knowledge of a supernatural kind. The examples include such famous works as the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, The Book of St Cyprian, The Key of Solomon and The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage.
The word is French, in the same sense. It began to appear in French-English dictionaries early in the nineteenth century but became more widely known in the 1850s. In French, it was a medieval modification of grammaire, a book of grammar, by which was meant Latin grammar, since at the time there was no other kind. It derives from the Latin grammatica, the study of literature in general, which by the Middle Ages had come to mean knowledge of Latin.
The shift from book of grammar to book of magic isn’t as weird as it might seem. Few among the ordinary people in those times could read or write. For superstitious minds books were troubling objects. Who knew what awful information was locked up in them? For many people grammar meant the same thing as learning, and everybody knew that learning included astrology and other occult arts.
In medieval English, grammarye was likewise the study of Latin grammar and this, too, took on undertones of occult learning, magic and necromancy. It fell out of use but was revived by Sir Walter Scott in his Lay of the Last Minstrel in 1805. (World Wide Words)
ichor [ahy-kawr, ahy-ker]
noun:
1 (Classical mythology) an ethereal fluid believed to supply the place of blood in the veins of the gods
2 an acrid, watery discharge, as from an ulcer or wound
3 (literary) any bloodlike fluid
Examples:
On my way home the blood coursed through my veins like an immortal ichor of the gods, full of sweet and inextinguishable fire. (John Munro, A Trip to Venus)
The thing that lay half-bent on its side in a foetid pool of greenish-yellow ichor and tarry stickiness was almost nine feet tall, and the dog had torn off all the clothing and some of the skin. (H P LOvecraft, The Dunwich Horror)
He reached beneath his tattered greatcoat and drew forth a cutlass that dripped with black ichor. (J Robert King, Guild Wars: Edge of Destiny)
And then comes the final test, the infallible touchstone of the seventh-rate: Ichor. It oozes out of severed tentacles, it beslimes tessellated pavements, bespatters bejeweled courtiers, and bores the bejesus out of everybody. (Ursula le Guin, 'From Elfland to Poughkeepsie')
Because my father has the ichor of capitalism flowing in his veins....For hundreds of years to be [a member of his family] has been to be a merchant, and to be a merchant is to make money. (Donna Leon, About Face)
Origin:
1630s, from French ichor (16c) or Modern Latin ichor, from Greek ikhōr, a word of unknown origin, possibly from a non-Indo-European language. (Online Etymology Dictionary)
Panglossian had a rare moment at the top of our lookups on March 9, 2020. An article in The New York Times gives an analysis of the combination of medical realities, scientific recommendations, and political responses to the coronavirus, especially the statements and actions of President Trump:
Mr. Trump, who is at his strongest politically when he has a human enemy to attack, has seemed less certain of how to take on an invisible killer. The role of calming natural leader is not one that has come easily as he struggles to find the balance between public reassurance and Panglossian dismissiveness.
Panglossian means "marked by the view that all is for the best in this best of possible worlds" or "excessively optimistic."
Panglossian comes from the name of a literary character, Pangloss, from Voltaire's novel Candide, first published in 1759. In the novel, Pangloss is depicted as an optimist whose positive attitude often seems at odds with his circumstances, and his motto is "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds."
The name Pangloss is from the Greek elements pan- ("all") and glōssa ("tongue," "language") suggesting glibness and garrulousness.
Other notable words derived from literary characters include quixotic and gargantuan.
You may have perhaps heard of there being a University at Aberdeen, in a distant and confused murmur, little suspecting, hoever, that from that Panglossian mint of doctors of canon and civil law, we derive articles of a peculiar salmon-tased jocosity.
— William Blackwood, Townsend's Tour Through Ireland and Great Britain, 1822
(source: Merriam-Webster Online)
Svengali (“a person who manipulates or exerts excessive control over another”) cozened its way to the top of our lookups on August 18th, 2017, following multiple news reports that political strategist Stephen Bannon would soon be fired from his position at the White House.
It is the second time this year that the word 'Svengali' has spiked in reference to Bannon.
Trump had been under mounting pressure to dispense with Bannon, who many officials view as a political Svengali but who has drawn scorn as a leading internal force encouraging and amplifying the president’s most controversial nationalist impulses.
—Ashley Parker, Philip Rucker, Robert Costa, and Damian Paletta, The Washington Post, 18 Aug. 2017
In 1894 George du Maurier published his novel, Trilby, which featured a decidedly unpleasant character named Svengali. The following year the name began appear in print used in a figurative manner.
This is the second time this year that Svengali has been among our top lookups while being used in reference to Bannon. The previous instance came at the end of January 2017, after the editorial board of The New York Times used the word in describing him.
(Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/news-trend-watch/svengali-bannon-leaving-white-house-20170818)
: an uncouth or rowdy person
Yahoo comes to the English language from the fertile imagination of Jonathan Swift, author of the famed Gulliver's Travels (as well as the somewhat less-remembered Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue).
In Gulliver's Travels the Yahoos were an imaginary humanoid race, brutish and uncouth. This book was also responsible for introducing the words Lilliputian and brobdingnagian.
"We are not your ordinary bunch of yahoos." - PC Magazine (advertisement). 24 Dec. 1985
(Source: Merriam-Webster's A Who's Who of literary allusions: words that come from characters in books)
Lilacs blossom just as sweet
Now my heart is shattered.
If I bowled it down the street,
Who's to say it mattered?
If there's one that rode away
What would I be missing?
Lips that taste of tears, they say,
Are the best for kissing.
Eyes that watch the morning star
Seem a little brighter;
Arms held out to darkness are
Usually whiter.
Shall I bar the strolling guest,
Bind my brow with willow,
When, they say, the empty breast
Is the softer pillow?
That a heart falls tinkling down,
Never think it ceases.
Every likely lad in town
Gathers up the pieces.
If there's one gone whistling by
Would I let it grieve me?
Let him wonder if I lie;
Let him half believe me.