“OK, so stay awake, right?” he said, pressing as much of his surface as he could against her marmoreally cold skin.I was listening to an audiobook, and I thought maybe the reader was garbling "mammalian"... or, I guess, "mammalianly." But no, it was "marmoreally." That means like marble, so "marble-like" would have been an easily comprehensible alternative. Or, no... it would need to be an adverb ("marble-likely"?). So, okay. I learned a word.
And what I want to talk about are more normal words, words you understand, but you have the feeling that they can't be used more than, say, once every 100 pages. The book I just read is Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom," and the word somebody should have told him not to use so much is "reproach." He used "reproach" 19 times. It's a long book, but it's not 1,900 pages. It's not even 1,000. It's 600. So 19 is too much. I know. I'm reproaching. But...
Connie, for her part, whenever it became clear that the boys were going off to be boys, knew enough to fall back and dematerialize without reproach or entreaty.... She was competing with her mom and sisters. She wanted her kids to be a reproach to them.... She’d never been a compromiser of him, never an insister on sidewalk hand-holding, never a clinger, a pouter, a reproacher.... Joey’s feeling of bereavement was giving way to irritation, because, no matter how much she denied that she was doing it, she couldn’t seem to help reproaching him. These moms and their reproaches, there was no end to it....The nature of his mother’s reproach wasn’t simple the way Carol Monaghan’s was. Carol, unlike her daughter, was not too bright. Connie had a wry, compact intelligence, a firm little clitoris of discernment and sensitivity to which she gave Joey access only behind closed doors....And on and on. There are 13 more.
Have you ever noticed something like that?
Posts
114 comments:
Richard Epstein says "It turns out that" much too much in podcasts.
Ken Follett is incapable of describing even the most minor female character without describing her breasts. Once you notice it, you can't stop seeing it.
"Richard Epstein says "It turns out that" much too much in podcasts."
Speaking is another matter. People just get careless or need filler or don't want to take the time to think of more interesting words. I used to annoy myself by saying "and so forth" too much when I was lecturing.
But when you're writing you know when you're using a word too much, and all you have to do is go back and rewrite. But I really do assume now that Franzen knew he was using "reproach" 19 times and he wanted to do it.
Maybe every author has a word that he uses out of proportion to its frequency in other writing.
And we all have our speech tics.
I'm going to draw a Speech Tick. And a Rep Roach.
Valid point. Bad examples.
There are much more egregious overuses of words -- such as using it too often in a thousand words -- or in a single paragraph. Using an odd word a couple of times every hundred pages is not something that I would even notice.
I’ve read most of Toni Morrison’s books and essays, and she overuses the word “limn” for “draw a line” or “highlight”. It’s such an odd-looking word that it throws me off because I keep thinking she meant “limb” or “damn”.
"Ken Follett is incapable of describing even the most minor female character without describing her breasts."
This is a huge theme in the first part of the Jonathan Franzen book "The Corrections" — a writer who realizes his screenplay is going to be rejected because it describes breasts with idiotic frequency.
It's a phrase, not just a single word, but: "In a word..." _Robinson Crusoe_, by Daniel Defoe.
"I’ve read most of Toni Morrison’s books and essays, and she overuses the word “limn” for “draw a line” or “highlight”. It’s such an odd-looking word that it throws me off because I keep thinking she meant “limb” or “damn”."
Yeah, "limn" is like "marmoreally" — are you sure you even want to use that once. It's irritatingly precious. It's twee.
"There are much more egregious overuses of words -- such as using it too often in a thousand words -- or in a single paragraph. Using an odd word a couple of times every hundred pages is not something that I would even notice."
It depends on the word.
I used to be a second reader for a writer who would use the word "ruefully" (as in "'Blah blah blah,' X said ruefully"). I strongly believed and I still believe that he should not have done that more than once in an entire book.
K.K. Beck is a writer of lovely mystery stories, but she has a tick in her conversations. When she has characters speaking, almost everyone responds to whatever someone else has said with "That's right."
Once you notice it, you notice it multiple times in every book.
"It's in every book? Really?"
"That's right."
Send him a thesaurus.
Blogger I Have Misplaced My Pants said...
Ken Follett is incapable of describing even the most minor female character without describing her breasts. Once you notice it, you can't stop seeing it.
We men tend to share that affliction.
I completely agree, Ann. From time to time I've edited friends' books, and I often point out when they've overused an unusual word. Once is okay, I tell them, and twice if they want to push it, but more than that simply calls attention to the writing rather than the subject, and that's a bad idea.
Use of made up words, like "meme," or misspellings of words, like "lede," are always overuse, even if used only once.
Yes. The book I'm reading he used the word picaresque and I didn't know it and then he kept using it. Now I know it too well
I won't even use the same "special" word twice in a Facebook Post. I am that anal about it.
THEOLDMAN
In China Mieville's The Scar, he uses "puissance" something like five times in three pages.
Althouse preproaches Franzen for using 'reproach' too much in future.
Verily, verily I say unto you, the use of repetition is Teaching 101.
I bet the men do repetition more than the women. Men think nothing of wearing the same suit and tie over and over. Women like to show a new style outfit every time they go out.
Tom Wolfe: solar plexus.
Many moons ago I worked with a SW engineer who began, it seemed, EVERY utterance with "Essentially,..."
but then there's cross cultural factors to consider. An American friend was in business meetings in Japan. Eventually she asked a bilingual colleague "They keep using the expression 'Ahno'. Is it important?"
he replied "It means 'Uhm...' ."
Marmoreal schoolmarm's pet marmoset eats marmalade by the Sea of Marmara.
A speech tic that really leaves me cold (marmoreally cold, even) is "ectcetera'.
"Clitoris of discernment" sounds like the name of an album by Cake
When I notice the pattern you describe, Althouse, I lose interest and quit reading.
RobinGoodfellow said...We men tend to share that affliction.
I have that problem with AOC. I never noticed until that dance video. Now I can't unnotice.
The British historian Max Hastings is a brilliant writer, yet has this hard-on for the word insouciant. It appeared at least a dozen times in Retribution. More than once I openly said, "Get a thesaurus there Max"
The first time I noticed it was with the Anne Rice books and the word "preternatural" and its relatives. It's just not a word that has a place in a lot of contexts, so when someone keeps humping it it really stands out.
Where can I find a list of these words too precious to use more than once a book?
Regarding breasts: Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.
chickenlittle said...
RobinGoodfellow said...We men tend to share that affliction.
I have that problem with AOC. I never noticed until that dance video. Now I can't unnotice.
Both men and women do it. Men check out boobs. Women check out the competition.
People used to talk about William Buckley's extended vocabulary, but it seemed to me that he had about twenty words that he recycled a lot. A couple of them were canard and solipsism.
Yes, I have seen something like that. Amerikans seem to utter "absolutely" and "awesome" every other sentence, as they used to say "cool" and "like" and "garner."
"Embryonic" appears 22 times in "On The Origin of Species". That is a lot of times to appear: the cosmopolitan "sphex" appears only once in the body.
Schlump is not well read or well spoken. Did he even study in university? Did he purchase his degrees? Can he be prosecuted for those crimes, i.e., bribery, fraud etc.
The international high court of justice in the Hague should prosecute Schlump for war crimes in Syria and elsewhere. Schlump needs to be permanently Guantanamized after first being waterboarded for the first year.
If you don't like the verb "Guantanamize" you can shorten it to guanomized meaning covered in seabird/bat shit. If you can't do the time don't do the crime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Court_of_Justice
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano
@jimbino
Ah, yes... garner.
I think “Freedom” has one “garner.”
Which is one too many.
I see the word 'thesaurus' too often.
Yes, I have seen something like that. Amerikans seem to utter "absolutely" and "awesome" every other sentence, as they used to say "cool" and "like" and "garner."
A strange occasional commenter on a blog I frequent has a tic that causes him to misspell the word Americans as well as relate every issue under discussion to the racial breakdown of National Parks users and his personal views on the distastefulness of procreation.
It never bothered me and still doesn't, but I now can't read or hear the word 'garner' without thinking of you, Althouse, lol.
Nuns taught us not to use the same word in our writing. When I wrote my valedictory address in high school, I remember specifically using the word 'vicissitudes' because I had already used the word 'changes'. I bet no one in the public high school from which I ended up graduating gave a care one that did that.
https://www.npr.org/2015/09/03/432732859/so-whats-the-big-deal-with-starting-a-sentence-with-so
https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2011/12/02/so-it-turns-out-that-everyones-starting-sentences-with-so/
I'm glad to see it's not just me. I'm somewhat horrified that people noticed it that long ago.
clitoris of discernment
ok-- first: W T F.
next: "clitoris of discernment"-- is that like the Prepuce of Prejudice?
There's an ongoing joke at my house about how much C.S. Lewis loved the word 'presently.'
"You would be given a program and you would be polishing it to death until it looked as dead as marble but just as shiny."
Russian pianist Vanentina Lisitsa critiquing her rigorous training.
She didnt know the Russian word for 'marmoreal'
When I was about 10, I hit upon my (at the time) Spinster Godmother's collection of Harlequins. Not only was I titillated at the thought of settling for being a red-headed wife to a Swarthy Foreigner, but, I learned that the phrase "The Pearly Light of the False Dawn" only needs to be used once, if at all, in a story.
Happy Belated Birthday.
Don't run the time approaches
Hotels and midnight coaches
Be sure to hide the reproaches
Always annoyed by political writing or commentary which refers to Trump supporters as "minions".
I don't notice individual words, but do with phrases.
"And so it goes."
Gingrich used to drive me crazy by starting every other sentence with:
"The fact of the matter is,"
Yes. Victuals. An author used that CONSTANTLY and since it was a war story, he must have used it 30 times a book.
By the end, I wanted to victual him with a thesaurus.
"The Pearly Light of the False Dawn" should only be used but lightly, even in a Harlequin Romance.
The word "Lord" appears 228 times in Hamlet. What a hack, that Shakespeare.
This struck a nerve with me.
'The'. I mean, most authors I read don't just use that once a hundred PAGES. They use it multiple times per hundred WORDS.
'A'. Egregiously overused
'And' and 'but' have their adherents. Far too many of them
I think it is more a personal thing. Now try to not notice how much 'the' is used on this thread.
Related: the XKCD comic titled "Up Goer Five," wherein a diagram of the Saturn 5 ("The only flying space car that's taken anyone to another world") is labeled "using only the ten hundred words people use the most often." It's hilarious. And the word "thousand" is apparently not one of the thousand most commonly used words in English.
Not until now.
Buckley had a whole dictionary of unusual words, but not useless ones.
The Quintessential Dictionary is made up of most of them, about 600 words that, if you learn them, enable you to read all of Buckley without looking anything up.
I suggest flash cards.
bgates:
Hwaet! From now on I'm starting every post this way.
re: the Up Goer Five -
my son and I have taken to sadly remarking "you are not going to space today." as appropriate.
Hwaet! Oops!
G.K.Ogden's Basic English is a few hundred words that enable you to say anything. Unfortunately the concept of phrasal verb hadn't occured to Ogden so it's way more than a few hundred conceptually.
There was a poetic annex published for it, in case you wanted to write basic poetry
C . Verse : (100)
angel, arrow, beast, blind, bow, breast, bride, brow, bud, calm, child, cross, crown, curse, dawn, delight, dew, dove, dream, eagle, eternal, evening, evil, fair, faith, fate, feast, flock, flow, fountain, fox, gentle, glad, glory, God/god1, grace, grape, grief, guest, hawk, heaven, hell, hill, holy, honey, honor, image, ivory, joy, lamb, lark, life, lion, lord, meadow, melody, mercy, noble, passion, perfume, pity, pool, praise, prayer, pride, priest, purple, rapture, raven, robe, rock, rose, rush, search, shining, shower, sorrow, soul, spear, spirit, storm, stream, strength, sword, thief, tower, travel, valley, veil, vine, violet, virgin, virtue, vision, wandering, wealth, weariness, weeping, wisdom, wolf, wonder.
chickenlittle said...
RobinGoodfellow said...We men tend to share that affliction.
I have that problem with AOC. I never noticed until that dance video. Now I can't unnotice.
****************
Good mind...good rack.
Take yer pick.
@ Mark..lede isn't a misspelling, it's newspaper jargon from the days of linotype printing.
Yes, Tom Wolfe’s use of solar plexus. Glad I’m not the only person who noticed this. Love Tom Wolfebut solar plexus but solar plexus overused.
"rhhardin said...
Buckley had a whole dictionary of unusual words, but not useless ones.
The Quintessential Dictionary is made up of most of them, about 600 words that, if you learn them, enable you to read all of Buckley without looking anything up.
I suggest flash cards."
In the long run haste lessons speed.
https://www.amazon.com/Lexicon-Cornucopia-Wonderful-Words-Inquisitive/dp/0156006162?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-d-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0156006162
This is a link more profound than any entity could ever know.
"Author overuses a word"
Now this is the kind of thing where a Social Credit Score could come in handy.
I use the word "dat" way too much.
For example:
Who dat, who dat, who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints!
I had the game on pause because I had to run out, came back, accidently changed the channel when my foot hit the remote, grr! So I am assuming that the Saints won then?
So "Johnathon Frantzen" is some woman's pseudonym, right?
tcrosse said...
Marmoreal schoolmarm's pet marmoset eats marmalade by the Sea of Marmara.
1/13/19, 3:30 PM
You bet your ass.
A rather uncreative wordsmith
""Richard Epstein says "It turns out that" much too much in podcasts."
Speaking is another matter. People just get careless or need filler."
Which is odd, but revealing, in Epstein's case, since he tends speak very rapidly and fluidly, with lots of content but without most of the typical fillers.
Don't put margarine on your marmoset or you'll never catch the marfar.
I told this story here in 2012, but I'll tell it again now. It's a story of the appearance of a writer overusing a word.
I was listening to Crime and Punishment via Kindle's text to speech and the characters kept saying "hectometers." That's not a difficult word, but it's a word you don't hear very often. "Why do these Russians keep using 'hectometers' as an interjection? What is the history of this? Is it agrarian in origin?"
I finally looked down at the text.
"Hm."
I overused ‘purblind’ for a while, as a commenter, I admit.
Are there any words that you feel yourself overusing in speech? How about only to one person?
A particular friend and I start saying "exactly" to excess whenever we get together. "Blah blah blah." "Exactly. Blah blah blah." "Exactly." It's like a tic. I do not do it otherwise. I don't know if he does.
Blogger Ceciliahere said...
Yes, Tom Wolfe’s use of solar plexus. Glad I’m not the only person who noticed this. Love Tom Wolfebut solar plexus but solar plexus overused.
You’ve obviously never been hit there. It makes an impression.
Based on the passage supplied, it seems like the author is trying to tell us something about the character -- namely that she uses, or thinks about, the term "reproach" too much. Can't say whether this conjecture is borne out by other uses of the word in the rest of the book.
In the mid 1990s I had a monthly subscription to Spin magazine, over just a few months I was able to detect a pattern of ridiculous overuse of the word irony and its variants. Seemingly every article and record review would contain the word irony, ironic, unironic, etc. If I remember correctly, I once found the word being used 15 times in just one issue.
Of course, the overuse of the word irony in Spin magazine still pales in comparison to the bizarre way in which the word literally has conquered the English speaking countries of the world. I've mentioned this on a previous post, but it's just unbelievable how people cannot utter or write the most simple sentence these days without inserting the word literally into it.
For example, around a year ago I listened to a podcast hosted by the writers Mollie Hemingway and David Harsanyi. In just 50 minutes of airtime she used the word literally ten times, and he used it six times. What they spoke about was actually interesting, but I have never listened to another one of their podcasts.
it seems like the author is trying to tell us something about the character
Modern doctrine is that good writing doesn’t call attention to itself. It breaks the spell that the writer is trying to create. Maybe this is an “art” novel that is supposed to break all of the “rules”. such as they are, IDK. But it’s a rule that I agree with.
One of the techniques of writing that I sometimes look for is the concept of “beats.” The author is supposed to create a couple of new. questions in your mind before answering an earlier question, this way you are always in a short term loop to get an answer to a question that is fresh in your mind. Keeps you turning the pages. Good writers do this invisibly to readers, poor writers make a hash of it by being too obvious, calling attention to the technique and making the reader roll his eyes. Lots of times writers can turn rules on their head, heavily using cliches, for example, in a way that becomes a running joke and freshens them up, or what have you, but writers will never knowingly violate the concept of beats, because you would simply stop reading.
Tom Wolfe. The word “gloaming” in “The Bonfire of the Vanities.” And there’s hardly a Stephen King movel where some kid doesn’t wet his pants.
she used the word literally ten times
She's spent too much time around Biden.
Everyone but me now uses "gifted" instead of "given", and it triggers me every time. Feels like I'm surrounded.
Many editors say that what they're looking for is an author's authentic voice. What if repetition of certain words or phrases IS my authentic voice? How can I be authentic if I have to stop and count usages?
(The irony is that I'm reading this when I should be responding to my editor's latest notes. One thing he wants is for me to decide whether I'm comfortable with my amount of repetition in certain passages.)
"Have you ever noticed something like that", asks Ann Althouse.
Why yes.
I remember poor Barry Obama and his awful prose style in his written speeches, completely unaware of his comical overuse of the words "Folks" and "I". My best guess is he will never understand what a sad and mediocre puppet he was with his little ambitions and his complete subservience to the mediocre opinions of the powerful people whom he struggled so successfully to please: my hope is that he accepts Jesus in his heart one day.
To be fair, I also remember Reagan and his overuse of the generic and unsubstantial word "well", which at the time was funny, but in retrospect was sort of a harbinger of his sad future years as a generic Alzheimer's victim.
Of course people will tell me they were "great men" and "inspiring" people, but me and you know better, I hope, although to be fair Reagan was at least, it seems, a competent and kind human being behind all the pomp and circumstance.
Worse yet - and I say this as a patient Christian who has politely listened to hundreds of bad sermons - are the sermonizers who talk at us about "the poor" - that is, about people who, according to the Bible, God loves more than he loves the rest of us (yes I have listened to many sermons where that was a big theme, and in its way, it is correct, but it is not the sort of thing that you discuss with people in a condescending tone and without understanding, in your heart, who the poor really are) - while, even as they deliver the sermon that they hope is a Christian sermon, condescendingly look out at their congregation with no apparent idea in their temporarily comfortable heads that in any large congregation there are at least a dozen people who may look middle-class (hence the condescending looks from the sermonizers) but who are fantastically poor, having lived a life in which almost everything has been stolen from them - maybe any chance at a decent family life was stolen from them by abusive parents (or abusive boyfriends of their mothers, after the biological dad left - at least a ten percent likelihood in some communities, to tell the sad truth) ,or maybe what was stolen was the satisfaction of being an aunt or an uncle (thanks to the abortion industry), or maybe what was stolen was that one chance at a happy childhood that is generally only available to people who do not have selfish parents; and on top of everything else, maybe they had stolen from them, every day of their lives, even the minimal satisfaction of hearing, just once, an honest word of recognition or apology from the people who did not care.
So many people are so thirsty for an honest word like this - just a word, recognizing that the real poor, the ones God loves so much because he is the God of the poor - the real poor might easily be you!
So, when I remember hearing the word "the poor" from one of those sad arrogant and condescending preachers, I pray for them, as I have done since at least the 1970s, as one prays for a child who was born with no common sense.
True, well jesus was scathing about the religious caste of his age, and most generous to those in need of the word of healing, the ones like in Luke 4, who drove him out of his home town and kept pestering through the end of the book
Through Luke 13, when the chief of the synagogue reproached him (there's that world again) for healing on the sabbath, when wouldn't it be appropriate.
Reagan didnt have the most inspiring childhood but he seemed to transcend it.
His view of life was perhaps too pollyanna then again their gritty grimy focus popular today doesn't seem to help many either.
Yes they forget they were once sinners until grace touched them, now Joel Osteen serves up this lukewarm tapioca which has no substance I switch the channel, on this latter day Norma Vincent peale.
Dan Simmons uses the word "lapis" to describe the sky on one of his planets every time that planet is mentioned. He also uses "limb" to describe the view of planets seemingly every time a character gets in a spaceship.
"her marmoreally cold skin"
Surely that's an adjective not an adverb? Where's the verb being qualified? Words ending in "ly" are mostly adverbs but gee that's a stretch. Or is "cold" not itself an adjective (being further qualified) in that phrase?
Yes they forget they were once sinners until grace touched them, now Joel Osteen serves up this lukewarm tapioca which has no substance I switch the channel, on this latter day Norma Vincent peale.
Paul is appealing, but Peale is appalling.
"There's no one like you, Elenorereally" -- The Turtles
"stone-cold" means exactly the same thing as "marmoreally cold", uses fewer syllables, and doesn't redirect the reader's attention from the story to the dictionary. I consider the unwarranted use of novelty words to be annoying as hell.
Now that you mention it, Chuck overuses a word relentlessly right here on this blog- "blah".
Indeed, he writes entire comments consisting only of "blah".
Peepeetape, writes entire comments using only the word "yada".
Very strange behavior.
mikesixes said 'stone-cold" means exactly the same thing as "marmoreally cold", uses fewer syllables, and doesn't redirect the reader's attention from the story to the dictionary.
I guess that must be why Marmoreally-Cold Steve Austin rebranded.
If you like words like "Marmoreally", you need to read Jack Vance!
Actually, just for the descriptions of meals, you need to read Jack Vance.
Meals and footnotes.
And dialog.
I'll come in again..
When writing for the general reader, one should use words the general reader understands . If you choose to make them reach for a dictionary, don’t do it more than a couole times in the whole piece. Never make them look up the same word twice. That’ll just piss them off.
There are much more egregious overuses of words -- such as using it too often in a thousand words -- or in a single paragraph. Using an odd word a couple of times every hundred pages is not something that I would even notice."
It depends on the word.
I used to be a second reader for a writer who would use the word "ruefully" (as in "'Blah blah blah,' X said ruefully"). I strongly believed and I still believe that he should not have done that more than once in an entire book.
1/13/19, 2:42 PM
Ann, using Ruefully instead of the more appropriate Sadly is just Egregious. See that?
"Based on the passage supplied, it seems like the author is trying to tell us something about the character -- namely that she uses, or thinks about, the term "reproach" too much. Can't say whether this conjecture is borne out by other uses of the word in the rest of the book."
It's not just one passage. The ellipses represent cuts that are many, many pages long. And there are at least 2 "she"s in there being perceived as reproachful. But "reproach" is important. The book title is so positive — "Freedom" — that I wonder if it was chosen to overcome the resistance we'd feel if we knew that "reproach" was at least as big of a force between these covers.
"Surely that's an adjective not an adverb? Where's the verb being qualified? Words ending in "ly" are mostly adverbs but gee that's a stretch. Or is "cold" not itself an adjective (being further qualified) in that phrase?"
It's an adverb modifying "cold." You use adverbs with verbs but also with adjectives. It's not a sequence of adjectives. It's like "very cold skin." "Very" modifies "cold." It's not another modifier of "skin." You wouldn't say, "She has very skin." "Very" is an adverb."
Hunter S. Thompson in "Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas", but he was able to make you not care about repetitiveness.
Hell of a story.
"Ann, using Ruefully instead of the more appropriate Sadly is just Egregious. See that?"
It's more unusual so you notice when it reappears, but that also made it tempting for a good writer to indulge in. I think he would have regarded "X said sadly" as trite and avoided it entirely.
Really, it's better to avoid any adverb with "said" when you're writing dialogue. I think one of Elmore Leonard's rules of writing is never do it at all. Never use an adverb with "said" when writing dialogue, Elmore Leonard said usefully.
Over and over, Jack Reacher either “said nothing” or he “paused a beat.”
It's a mistake I make all the time. I write first thinking about the thought I'm trying to express and not so much the words I use. Fairly often that results in an echo, where the same word is twice, not wrongly, but unnecessarily redundant.
Then I usually reread what I wrote and try to catch errors like that.
mandrewa - that is how I almost always write, too. In fact that is the best description of how I usually write that I have ever read.
I talk more accurately (than I write) though thanks to years of people looking at me quizzically when I don't use the right words to mean what I say. When I write I don't get that immediate feedback. So I am more clear when I talk than when I write.
For me, it's Tom Wolfe using chiaroscuro. Not sure if he used it twice in the same book, but he used it in different books. Still too much.
Everyone that makes a living using words, be they writers or tv/radio on-air talent, end up with crutch words or phrases if they're not careful. Rarely, and I mean very rarely, do these crutches turn into a catch phrase, which themselves usually have a shelf-life. Once in a lifetime, a catch phrase might turn into an iconic phrase.
As far as authors go, Peter F Hamilton is my all-time favorite sci-fi writer and I've had the good fortune to have lunch with him once. He used "enzyme-bonded concrete" over and over and over and over in his Night's Dawn trilogy and I cringe now when I reread the series :)
From Josephine Tey's "Daughter of Time": "Tonypandy". She was British, so her readers probably knew what that meant. As near as I can find out, in her context, it meant "something like a riot" (Tonypandy is a Welsh town where there were riots in the early 1900s (coal mines).
I recently reread an essay I wrote 14 years ago. When I came to "chided," I knew the editor had changed "said."
Unusual words make readers stop. (I'm the sort who'd look up "marmoreal.") Many won't continue reading.
Robert Jordan, when he wrote Conan pastiches early in his career, was fond of the words callimastian and callipygian, which mean beautiful breasts and beautiful buttocks, respectively.
SF author Nathan Lowell is fond of the word snicker to describe all sorts of laughter, but snicker describes a particular kind of laughter, the inarticulate sound made by the cartoon dog "Muttley." Most other types of laughter can be associated with a particular laughing sound: the giggle (hee hee hee), the chuckle (Instapundit's famous heh heh), the chortle of Santa Claus (ho ho ho), the guffaw (haw haw haw) and the generic laugh (ha ha).
If you're not a cartoon fan, here is the Muttley snicker.
Thanks to the internet, when I come across a word that I have not seen before (and cannot fully understand it as used in context), I just Google it. If I had to look it up in a dictionary (as I did as a youth), I would pass.
THEOLDMAN
When I tried to post my last comment, the reCaptcha images told me to select the "parking meters". There were two. I did that. It wouldn't work. There was mailbox in the bottom right-hand image. Surely not... I selected it and it worked! Someone doesn't know the difference between a parking meter and a mailbox? Oh, well (insert witty comment about Trump and the MSM here).
THEOLDMAN
Hello everyone. I saw comments from people who already got their loan from
Jackson Walton Loan Company, honestly i thought it was fake , and then I
decided to apply under their recommendations and just few days ago I
confirmed in my own personal bank account a total amount of $10,000 which I
requested for. This is really a great news and i am so happy, I am advising
everyone who needs real loan to apply through their email (Text or Call
+1-586-331-5557) (jacksonwaltonloancompany@gmail.com) They are capable of
given you your loan thanks.
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