From: jwkenne@attglobal.net   
      
   On 2015-05-11 18:32:22 +0000, William Vetter said:   
      
   > Dorothy J Heydt wrote:   
   >> In article ,   
   >> William Vetter   wrote:   
   >>> Dorothy J Heydt wrote:   
   >>>> In article ,   
   >>>> William Vetter   wrote:   
   >>>>> aileuromorphic   
   >>>>>   
   >>>>> vibrissae   
   >>>>>   
   >>>>> metapodia   
   >>>>>   
   >>>>> calcaneus   
   >>>>   
   >>>> Yes, if they were the right words for the occasion.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> I recently commented elsethead on David Brin's using words like   
   >>>> bromopnean and atrichic, for which he probably could have used   
   >>>> "stinky-breathed" and "hairless," at the cost of making the   
   >>>> prose a little less distinctive.   
   >>>>   
   >>> Yeah, I saw that.  That's why I posted this.  Also, no activity here.   
   >>>   
   >>> When I was in my mid-twenties, I had a book with at least two words on   
   >>> every page that sent me to the research library to go through volumes   
   >>> of OED for words.  It was a sort of romance novel/space opera hybrid   
   >>> where all of the male characters had hair and muscles like Fabio, and   
   >>> the writing was flowery.  None of the words were ever there.  I think   
   >>> she invented them freely from roots.  At page 50, I asked myself, "Why   
   >>> am I doing this?"  So when I try this with my own drafts, or at least   
   >>> with something that's available that resembles the thickest dictionary   
   >>> possible, and the word isn't there, I ask whether I am punishing my   
   >>> younger self.   
   >>>   
   >> I'm trying and failing to remember who wrote an essay on   
   >> vocabulary, specifically in F/SF, and gave the example of a woman   
   >> who returned a book to him, saying, "I don't like this.  I have   
   >> to look up too many words."   
   >   
   > That means the reader is blitzed.  Several obscure words in a novel may   
   > excite the reader without blitzing her.   
   >   
   >> He may have been talking about a   
   >> book by A. Merritt, or that may have been in a different   
   >> paragraph; but the point he was making was that Merritt's work   
   >> was very rich in vocabulary.  I remember a sentence on the order   
   >> of " 'Crimson' isn't a word in the standard reader's vocabulary;   
   >> 'red' isn't a word for Merritt."   
   >>   
   > Crimson is in the dictionary.  Aileuromorphic is not in the dictionary   
   > (if you want to spell it like ailourophobia, it won't be in there   
   > either).   
      
   For Heaven’s sake, the very first comicbook superhero was "The Crimson   
   Avenger" (a blatant ripoff of the Green Hornet).   
      
   --   
   John W Kennedy   
   "Give up vows and dogmas, and fixed things, and you may grow like That.   
   ...you may come to think a blow bad, because it hurts, and not because   
   it humiliates.  You may come to think murder wrong, because it is   
   violent, and not because it is unjust."   
     -- G. K. Chesterton.  "The Ball and the Cross"   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)