Also: "There's a part of me that wants to admire the writer's way with words and a part of me that's about to blurt — to paraphrase George W. Bush — What the fuck are you talking about, lambent?"
That link about Bush goes back to a post I wrote in May 2004, when this blog was 4 months old and William Safire was still writing "On Language" columns in the NYT. Oddly enough, Safire was talking about a passage in the new Bob Woodward book.
Some things pass away and some things stay the same. From Safire:
"The Homeland Security bill was being blocked in the Senate by a filibuster,'' writes Woodward. ''Calio told the president that they were about to 'vitiate' the filibuster."
George Bush's reaction —"What the f**k are you talking about, vitiate?" — was the first time I'd written "fuck" on this blog, albeit with asterisks. I was puritanical about it, saying it was a word "which I ordinarily never write, but consider importantly quotable in this context." Ha ha.
IN THE COMMENTS:
Deevs said:Lambent. A word I learned from playing the Gears of War video game over ten years ago. Maybe that's also where the New Yorker writer learned the word, and his pretentiousness is actually a demonstration of his own low-brow hobbies, past or present.Aha!
"The Lambent are mutated Locusts who have been infected by Immulsion. A yellow liquid-based parasite used as a fuel source by the Human population of Sera..."
Posts
32 comments:
'I was puritanical about it, saying it was a word "which I ordinarily never write, but consider importantly quotable in this context." Ha ha.'
And now, all these years later, here you are, in the company of sailors and ruffians : )
Deadpan + Offbeat = Deadbeat. Its a port-mantle word -- perfectly cromulent.
"Any person who vitiates the atmosphere in any place so as to make it noxious..."
There's a dispute in Malawi over whether that language, in a criminal statute, outlaws farting.
Hey, that remind me of an old story about George Bush:
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2011/02/any-person-who-vitiates-atmosphere-in.html?hl=gu
Well, Ann. The blog has fucking changed since 2004. And you probably have too.
Lambent. A word I learned from playing the Gears of War video game over ten years ago. Maybe that's also where the New Yorker writer learned the word, and his pretentiousness is actually a demonstration of his own low-brow hobbies, past or present.
Loury and McWhorter use the n-word, or mention actually, against the imposition of idiocy in editorial standards.
I have to ask. As a 30-something year old, I laugh (I cringe, I blush, etc.) looking back on posts I wrote in my 20s and - even worse - my teens. Are you implying that even when I’m in my 70s, I’m still gonna to be rolling my eyes at things I will have one day written in my 50s and 60s?
I am utterly and completing delighted learn that 2004 Althouse “ordinarily never” wrote “fuck.” How things change!
I think you should write a letter to the New Yorker about this deadbeat/deadpan mix-up. (Do they publish letters?)
The only place I recall seeing the word lambent is Faulkner. I suspect it appears in multiple books and stories of his; and in at least some cases, multiple times. He would have loved its moody connotations.
Here's one reference from Light in August. (It's a citation from someone's essay on the novel.)
..... The novel began as a short story entitled “Dark House,” about the Reverend Gail Hightower, the ineffectual preacher whose ability to minister to his parish is stunted by his preoccupation with his own family history. He is trapped in the past, in that “single instant of darkness in which a horse galloped and a gun crashed ... in the lambent suspension of August into which night is about to fully come.”
Can't seem to get a link to the essay on here, but it was by a Peter J. Goodwin.
“Lambent” is pretentious, in The New Yorker tradition of putting that thing over the second “o” in words like cooperation.
But I don’t think that the use of “deadbeat” is wrong. The linkable Merriam-Webster gives the first definition of “deadbeat” as “loafer.” That’s broader than the second meaning of “one who persistently fails to pay personal debts or expenses.”
In any case, it’s MacDonald’s persona that is being described as deadbeat, with the example of that given of Norm saying that after he lost his first pair of glasses he couldn’t be bothered to get a second pair. Deadpan is not the word to describe that.
"Lambent. A word I learned from playing the Gears of War video game over ten years ago. Maybe that's also where the New Yorker writer learned the word, and his pretentiousness is actually a demonstration of his own low-brow hobbies, past or present."
Ah! I looked that up. The "glowies."
"I have to ask. As a 30-something year old, I laugh (I cringe, I blush, etc.) looking back on posts I wrote in my 20s and - even worse - my teens. Are you implying that even when I’m in my 70s, I’m still gonna to be rolling my eyes at things I will have one day written in my 50s and 60s?"
Yes, and ironically, that's how you feel *young* when you are 70: you're doing something that you would do in your 30s!
There was only one other time, other than these 2 posts today, when I've used the word "lambent" — in the 17+ year history of this blog.
That was last April and it was also quoting The New Yorker:
"... I look up from my phone and my own apartment glows with that same kind of concentrated attention, as if I were seeing it in montage, too. The objects around me are lambent with significance. I can take in the vibe of my home office: hibiscus tree, hardwood desk, noise-cancelling headphones, sixties-jazz trio, to-go coffee cup..."
I think "lambent" is a word to be avoided. It's like "limpid." You forget the meaning even if you've looked it up in the past and in guessing what the word means, you see a familiar word — "lamb" or "limp" — and that's only going to throw you off track. It has nothing to do with the word you're trying to figure out.
"when I've used the word "lambent""
I shouldn't have used the word "used." There's the "use/mention" distinction. I mentioned "lambent" — all 3 times — and I have never used it.
But "lambent" will not become another "garner" for me. It would have to come up way more often. "Garner" is bad because of overuse. If "lambent" were used often enough to be familiar — like, say, "recumbent" or "ambient" — then we'd learn the meaning and it would be fine.
"I am utterly and completing delighted learn that 2004 Althouse “ordinarily never” wrote “fuck.” How things change!"
You have no idea how much I worried that I would get in trouble for something about the blog. I worried about all sorts of things back in the early days of blogging. I was worried about censorship or being put behind an adult pay wall. I listen to a podcast where the podcaster always avoids saying the word because he believes he'll be put in an adults-only category. So that sort of thing still goes on. I am at the mercy of faceless others. As an older, retired person, I may take more risks. But they are real risks. I'm thankful that it's something that can be laughed about because we are not out of the censorship woods yet.
I also worried that I would lose readers. That was back when I was already getting a lot of pushback that tended to include the phrase "you, a law professor." That's a running joke here at Meadhouse: "you, a law professor."
Kai beats me to it- Faulkner is where I first found it, but it was obvious the meaning from the contexts. It isn't word I remember seeing in a crossword puzzle, either.
I also didn't use to use the word "fuck" growing up- I learned to start using in 1983 when I first saw "Risky Business".
“It's your weakness gives them their strength. Mark how they dare not speak to me. A nameless horror has descended on you, keeping us apart. And yet why should this be? What have you lived through that I have not shared? Do you imagine that my mother's cries will ever cease ringing in my ears? Or that my eyes will ever cease to see her great sad eyes, lakes of lambent darkness in the pallor of it will ever cease ravaging my heart? But what matter? I am free. Beyond anguish, beyond remorse. Free. And at one with myself. No, you must not loathe yourself, Electra. Give me your hand. I shall never forsake you.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit and Three Other Plays
"lambent darkness"
it's like jumbo shrimp
One test of whether a word is any good is does it appear in either "Moby Dick" or "The Great Gatsby"?
Does "lambent" pass the test?
NO!
"I also didn't use to use the word "fuck" growing up- I learned to start using in 1983 when I first saw "Risky Business"."
If the "also" refers to me, you're misreading me. I said "which I ordinarily never write." I never claimed not to say it, only not to write it, and that meant write it on the blog, or in my other writing, legal scholarship.
I've even spoken it in class as a law professor. Always in the phrase "Fuck the draft."
"Fuck" appears numerous times in the original, unexpurgated edition of Moby Fucking Dick.
Althouse, if you're going with nameless horrors, HP Lovecraft is your go-to author. He has in three different stories lambent nibuses, lambent tricklings, a lambent radiance. But I don't recall a single use of f**k in his tales, despite situations well suited to such an exclamation.
"I never claimed not to say it, only not to write it, and that meant write it on the blog, or in my other writing, legal scholarship"
Would someone please direct me to the legal scholarship that does? That sounds like fun...
A lot of fuckin' posts by AA on this one...
>>I also didn't use to use the word "fuck" growing up
Me too. But (three years younger than Althouse), I use it constantly now, when I'm confident it's not totally inappropriate. One question, which I can't confidently answer, is whether I ever used it in front of my mother before she died at the age of 96. I'm thinking no, but I wouldn't swear to it (so to speak).
--gpm
I was pretty sure "lambent" had something to do with light but, in all honesty, could not define it.
I'm currently on an Amtrak train in the dark in the middle of New York State on the Lake Shore Limited heading to Chicago for my 50th high school reunion, drinking my own Tanqueray and tonic (you need to bring your own cuz the onboard stuff is awful; and, of course, thanks to Covid, NO ICE!). Kinda spaced out at this point, but I keep thinking I'm still at home and pretty soon I'm going to need to use the toilette in the "roomette." Shoulda used the restroom when we hooked up with the NY train in Albany.
--gpm
George Bush's reaction —"What the f**k are you talking about, vitiate?"
Bush I had the hardheaded WASP practicality of a banker's son.
In Bush II it had become a brutish pride in stupidity.
That's what happened to anti-intellectualism in American life.
But what happened to intellectualism was even worse.
Post a Comment