vocab

[kev67]

I have just started reading this. It has a good opening chapter at least. I am already struggling a bit with some of the vocabulary, despite the explanatory notes. Let me see:


haggler - itinerant dealer of goods
lamb's fry - cooked lamb's offal, especially testicles
black-pot - some sort of peasant dish?
chitterlings - cooked pig intestines
ostler - stableman at an inn
market-nitch - as much alcohol as you can drink after market
uncabined - unconfined


Nice to have a dialect guide in a book, although "voicing approximately rendered by the syllable UR" is not all that helpful.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Good, I'm glad you have started it, I hope you enjoy it.

The vocab is not difficult at all when you get used to it. Don't forget Hardy's writing set in rural 'Wessex' and as a result there are some dialect words/phrases in there but don't let that distract you from the flow of the text.

[cacian]

I have just started reading this. It has a good opening chapter at least. I am already struggling a bit with some of the vocabulary, despite the explanatory notes. Let me see:


haggler - itinerant dealer of goods
lamb's fry - cooked lamb's offal, especially testicles
black-pot - some sort of peasant dish?
chitterlings - cooked pig intestines
ostler - stableman at an inn
market-nitch - as much alcohol as you can drink after market
uncabined - unconfined

Nice to have a dialect guide in a book, although "voicing approximately rendered by the syllable UR" is not all that helpful.
Hi Kev67. I tried to gopass the first page but then thought better of it so good luck;)
One question if you do not mind:
what do you mean by a syllable UR?

[kev67]

Hi Kev67. I tried to gopass the first page but then thought better of it so good luck;)
One question if you do not mind:
what do you mean by a syllable UR?

The passage is

"Tess Durbeyfield at this time of her life was a mere vessel of emotion untinctured by experience. The dialect was on her tongue to some extent, despite the village school; the characteristic intonation of that dialect, for this district, being the voicing approximately rendered by the syllable UR, probably as rich an utterance as any to be found in human speech."

Perhaps he means OOO-AAAHHH. Check this example (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHtfZCMYCP0&feature=related) at 0:55.

[cacian]

The passage is

"Tess Durbeyfield at this time of her life was a mere vessel of emotion untinctured by experience. The dialect was on her tongue to some extent, despite the village school; the characteristic intonation of that dialect, for this district, being the voicing approximately rendered by the syllable UR, probably as rich an utterance as any to be found in human speech."

Perhaps he means OOO-AAAHHH. Check this example (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHtfZCMYCP0&feature=related) at 0:55.

I think he propably meas EUUUUUR with
try and say
HER without the H.

[kiki1982]

It's sometimes interesting to check out what people ate back then.

An ostler could also be someone renting out horses (and carriages) for a living, I believe, but the denomination stretched from being employed in the stables of an inn to more independent occupations. Or that's what I gathered from Collins Dictionary.

The 'UR' sound is west country, I believe. Is that not the guys of the 'I've got a brandnew combine harvester'-song with a lot of inuendo? It is also called the 'Birmingham bur' and has a strongly vocalised r pretty much like the Americans, Irish, Canadians etc. Not a silent one like the rest of us.

I agree, Hardy uses a lot of dialect, but it's nice in a way. It doesn't really get in the way of the flow. Don't let yourself be distracted by the notes too much. The reason why he is using historical dishes (or what was probably eaten in his time by poor people still) is that he wants to embelish his story as much as possible. As long as you know that they are drinking or eating something it hardly matters what it is exactly.

[kev67]

The 'UR' sound is west country, I believe. Is that not the guys of the 'I've got a brandnew combine harvester'-song with a lot of inuendo? It is also called the 'Birmingham bur' and has a strongly vocalised r pretty much like the Americans, Irish, Canadians etc. Not a silent one like the rest of us.

Yep, that's them, The Wurzels. I can't say I've ever heard of the 'Birmingham bur' before or noticed a strongly vocalised r among the Irish and Americans. I will look it up though. I know Hardy is from Dorset and they used to have quite thick west country accents there. I have difficulty telling one country accent from another. Presumably the Dorset accent was slightly different to Somerset, Wiltshire, Devon and all the other counties around there. I once watched about 20 minutes of Roman Polanski's Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Most of the actors seemed to have nailed the accent, except Nasstassja Kinski who played Tess, and whose accent was not spot on.

I got to say, the vocabulary and references are rather more difficult than Dickens' some thirty years earlier. I am not sure whether the reference notes were originally supplied by Thomas Hardy, but if there were then they were meant for contemporary readers. That leaves plenty for his future readers to scratch their heads over. He uses long words, he uses phonetic spelling of accents, and he uses 19th century, peasant vocabulary. He also makes allusions that his contemporary readers may have understood, but which are lost to most of us. It's not holding me up much though.

Some more interesting use of language obervations:


Numbers are pronounced two-and-twenty, four-and-twenty instead of twenty-two, twenty-four. I noticed Charles Dickens used the same convention. I wonder when that changed. I often thought the German way of counting numbers (e.g. zweiundzwanzig, vierundzwanzig) was rather quaint.

In chapter 5 it says somewhere, "As Tess grew older, and began to see how matters stood, she felt quite a Malthusian towards her mother for thoughtlessly giving her so many little sisters and brothers..." That amused me slightly. Whenever I read any book on economics or sustainability, it nearly always refers to Robert Malthus, whose hypothesis was that any population eventually grows to exceed the carrying capacity of its environment.

At the end of chapter 5, after meeting Tess for the first time, Alec d'Urberville says, "Well - I'm damned! What a funny thing! Ha-ha-ha! And what a crumby girl!" Crumby?! That sounds harsh. She's rather a lovely girl. Presumably 'crumby' meant something else then.

[kiki1982]

The Wurzels! That's them!

Apparently it's called the 'Birmingham burr' (two Rs), but there is also a so-called 'Bristol burr' (according to the BBC) which we are talking about here I think. Birmingham does not pronounce its Rs too much where to the west they do.

Never noticed that vocablised r? Maybe it's the place you are used to. I have always wondered whether the sheer amount of Irish who emigrated to America actually had that hideous American accent in some places on their consciousness...

I agree that Dickens is easier, maybe because he doesn't embellish too much, or at least not with things we don't know.

The numbers:
I think it started to change around the second half of the 19th century. I think Trollope already writes in twenty twos and not two-and-twenties. I don't know why this happened. I have tried to Google, but too difficult to find. Maybe it has to do with the country being split into two groups of dialects and eventually they decided only to opt for one. With a very efficient Victorian school system, that will spread like wildfire. Bearing in mind they almost eterminated the Welsh language in a few generations, I think that is well possible.

I think some of the notes are Hardy's for his contemporary public, but some are modern. I think they should be marked as original or not in your edition, though. It stands no doubt that Hardy is slightly more difficult to read than Dickens, but I believe he also wrote with much more love for his world than Dickens. Maybe it's down to the setting (a city is always less intimate than the country), but I feel Hardy loves every one of his characters (but escpecially Tess) where Dickens kind of 'used' them to criticise whatever he felt like. Which he did well, though.

[kev67]

More vocabulary from just after the rape.

propinquity - nearness. Could have guess this from the context.
"rendlewood" (barked-oak). Odd how Hardy felt the need to explain this word and not all the others.
hontish - haughty
flexuous - full of bends or curves
quiescent - inactive. Knew that one as it appeared in a technical manual once.
apotheosized - glorified

[kev67]

Tess is leaving home again to work as a dairymaid over the summer.

kine - cows.
milchers - cows again, but why milchers and not milkers?
gypsy's crock - three legged cooking pot, but cows have four teats, don't they.
steading - a small farm.
barton - a farmyard.
unexpended - not spent.
psalter - a book containing psalms.
precept - commandment, instruction or order.

[kev67]

This reminds me of Call My Bluff (TV panel game where the panelists give three definitions of an obscure word and the other side has to guess which is correct).

patten - wooden-soled shoe
azew - dry up (in reference to cows' udders)
kex - hollow stem or stalk
stave - rung (in this instance)
on the stoop - bent over (I think)
tranters - peddlers

The head dairyman asks Tess if she wants a "dish o' tay or victuals". Funny how Dickens' characters pronounces 'victuals' as 'wittles', but Hardy's characters say it proper. Dish o' tay presumably means cup of tea.

[kev67]

ebullition - violent outpouring
niaiseries - silliness
rozum - ?

'niaiseries' was written in italics so is presumably foreign, French I expect.
'rozum' is presumably not a Polish or Czech loan word but I can't find any other definition. It has a west country sound to it.

[kiki1982]

Niaserie comes from the French 'niais", according to Wikitionary, 1 Oiseau de fauconnerie que l’on prenait dans le nid et qui n’en étaient pas encore sortis. (Falkonry bird which was taken from its nest before leaving it, i.e. still very young); 2 (fig.) Qui, dans ses paroles et ses actions, montre de l’inexpérience et de la sottise. (he who, through his words or actions, shows inexperience and stupidity/foolishness).

Rozum could refer to reason/understanding. From the Polish which expresses the idea of 'I understand' as '(Ja) rozumie'. Could that be helpful at all?

[kev67]

Angel Clare is descibed as "one id the most rebellest rozums you ever knowed" by Dairyman Crick with respect to his views on noble families. I doubt rozum really does derive from Polish or Czech. Maybe it is a west country corruption of another word or the name of some famous rebel now lost in time.

convenances - the social proprieties or conventionalities.

[kev67]

carking - to burden or be burdened with trouble
trowing - to think, believe or trust
love-making - presumably meant something different then.

[kiki1982]

Yes, to make love meant something else ;). I think it means something in the way of the American meaning (that is kissing and things, isn't it?). Although, back then, kissing was obscene too (bridegrooms were advised to keep that vile practice for when bride and groom were alone and at home... Literally to 'spare their new wife the embarrasment and mortification'...). I suppose it was more nice words and holding hands, really...

[kev67]

The rate of obscure words has slowed down a bit. I only noticed two in the most recent chapter.

lucubration - laborious study especially at night, or a solemn literary work (how apt).
rubric - a little used word which still somehow has seven meanings:


a class, category, title or name
a part of a manuscript or book
a title or heading of a statute or chapter in a code of law
a direction in a missal, hymnal or other liturgical book
an authoritive rule or direction
a short commentary or explanation covering a broad subject
red oche

[kev67]

Yes, to make love meant something else ;). I think it means something in the way of the American meaning (that is kissing and things, isn't it?). Although, back then, kissing was obscene too (bridegrooms were advised to keep that vile practice for when bride and groom were alone and at home... Literally to 'spare their new wife the embarrasment and mortification'...). I suppose it was more nice words and holding hands, really...

I thought the Americans called that 'making out'. I think I'd splutter out my cup of coffee if I read that in a Thomas Hardy book.

[paradoxical]

I'm glad you're reading Tess as well.


At the end of chapter 5, after meeting Tess for the first time, Alec d'Urberville says, "Well - I'm damned! What a funny thing! Ha-ha-ha! And what a crumby girl!" Crumby?! That sounds harsh. She's rather a lovely girl. Presumably 'crumby' meant something else then.
[/LIST]

Yes, crumby was actually meant as a compliment. According to my Penguin edition, it means "nice".

[kiki1982]

I thought the Americans called that 'making out'. I think I'd splutter out my cup of coffee if I read that in a Thomas Hardy book.

haha, that's not what I meant. I would also spit out my coffee... ;)

I guess somewhere in my head I made the connection between the two expressions because of both their main verbs being 'make'. That's all really.

In The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1847, but plays in the Regency period) there is a good definition of making love: the evil (just turned) fiancé of the main female character is bending over her chair and whispering to her what his (depraved) friends have said about him getting engaged and her uncle tells him to 'stop making love to [his] niece'. So, it meant just say lovely things in private to each other, maybe hold hands or something. No more.

Making out can also be used in that way, I think. That's where I went with that, although I admit the analogy is a bit skewed. :)


Yes, crumby was actually meant as a compliment. According to my Penguin edition, it means "nice".

Well, I looked it up when I first read Tess in our Collins dictionary and 'crumby' means soft, like the inside of bread, but the dictionary also referred to the alternative spelling of 'crummy' which means (19th century slang) of little value, inferior; unwell or depressed (to feel crummy).

Even if Alec's meaning would only be 'soft' and we would leave the second one out of the equation because it is slang (did Alec use slang as he was high class?), as that term 'soft' is coming from such a nasty character, I can't see it being a compliment, but rather a demeaning kind of soft: pliable and flexible, let's say; someone you can mold to your own purpose.

[kev67]

temerarious - recklessly daring
postillion - someone who rides the near horse of a pair in a team of horses pulling a carriage
drachm - 1/8th of a fluid ounce
horried - muddied, filthy?
gallied - worried, harrassed
andiron - one of a pair of metal supports holding logs for a fire
plenary - full, unqualified, complete
prestidigitation - skill in conjuring tricks
wonted - accustomed to
vitalization - to endow with life, animate
proclivity - natural propensity or inclination

Had to use Ask to find the definition of horry. Google couldn't find it.

[kev67]

I had trouble finding the definition of glane. Tess's idiot father says about what his friends will think on her return, "How they'll squint and glane." The internet seemed to think it was French. Luckily, someone (http://recently-banned-literature.blogspot.co.uk/2010/03/tess-of-durbervilles-glossary.html) else found out what it means, along with a few other phrases.

[kev67]

purlieu - piece of land at the edge of the forest
exaction - excessive or unjust demand
mommet - some sort of mild insult?
percipient - having a good understanding of things
plashed - bent and interwoven to form a hedge
clipsed or colled - clasped or embraced
lanchets - some sort of geographical feature?
lynchets - some sort of geographical feature?
siliceous - growing in or needing soil rich in silica (WTF?)
ancles ?
fain - pleased or willing under the circumstances / obliged
integument - skin, cover, shell
maister - master, principle, chief
thirtover ?
lackaday - used to express regret or disapproval

I don't know how Hardy could have expected his readers to know all these words, even then.

[kiki1982]

hmmm, some of them are quite obscure, yes, but others are just old ways of saying things.

exaction - an exacting person is one who is unreasonable and precise in his demands
percipient - gives you the word 'perceive'
fain - 'I would fain go to the backery...' means 'I would like to/I would be happy to go to the bakery...' Of course mostly it would be used in less everyday situations, but that is what it means.
wont/wonton - 'he was wont to' means he used to do X often/usually; a wonton habit also for example; it could also be used as a verb

plenary - I don't know whether this applies to the parliament in Britain, but in Belgium and France (I suppose) you can have a 'plenary session' in the parliament which means as far as I know that every member is present in order to vote. It comes from the word 'plein' in French which means 'full'.

oh, postillion - you could have seen one in action at the Queen's carriage procession this Jubilee. Her carriage was pulled by four horses (?) and ridden by a postillion. Victoria's at her diamond Jubilee too, actually. Was also a landau carriage. I guess they do not have a box to sit on for a coachman.

The only thing I have come across for 'ancles' is another spelling of 'ankles' as the body parts, but I suppose you know those.

Are these words all in the notes or do you look them up yourself?

[kev67]

Your understanding of English vocabulary seems better than mine.

I look most of them up. In the last batch, plashed was explained in the notes at the back; clipsed or colled was defined in the link in post 22, and I looked up the others on the internet. I don't think the notes at the back were put there by Hardy; I think they were put there by some helpful editor. Very occasionally, Hardy puts the definition in brackets, e.g. rendlewood.

Reading this reminds me of when I used to try and read French and German books. Quite often I'd have to look up some word in a Marcel Pagnol story, just to find it was some plant we don't have here or some sort of outdated tool or device. I once tried to read Das Boot in German, but gave up because every other sentence contained a bit of regional dialect, submarine jargon or profanity. Reading Tess isn't quite that bad, but it must be alienating for many potential readers.

[kiki1982]

Indeed, most notes are by the helpful editor. Although I have seen one or two by Hardy, but they are usually at the bottom of the page or marked that they were added by himself.

Three years ago I started a little notebook for 'difficult words' as I found that some words I kept looking up as I didn't remember them (lazy me).

Ironically, wont, proclivity, crummy, (h)ostler, obstinate, lest, anon, mirth, reproof, valour, myriad and more of those slightly older words figure in the first year. ;) I complained in one post on here about Wilde that he used difficult words like 'ensconce' and 'myriad' :rolleyes:.

Oh, spire was another one that I found in Jude and had heard a few times. I wanted to know what it was... And lo and behold later it was used on a documentary of some kind. Was I glad that I knew what the presenter was talking about. :)

The same with my recent addition 'precentor' (the choir and music master in a cathedral or something) who featured also at the Jubilee... :hurray:

I don't look all of them up, though. If I feel they are important to the story or they pique my interest, I will, if I feel they are just part of a description and no more, I won't.

Dialect can indeed be difficult. Like Hardy writes for example (I don't think so much in Tess, in The Mayor of Casterbridge and FFTMC it crops up more) or Scott. It is more difficult the less you know, because there are apostrophes and sounds weirdly spelled. 'Thank'ee', for example is easy to see what it is as coming from 'thank ye/thee' as an older way of saying 'you' (either plural or singular), but a foreigner is going to find that difficult because he'll want to know where the hell this 'ee' comes from. If he hasn't seen any Shakespeare, he'll certainly be at a loss.
As an anecdote, ten years ago, when I met my husband and I had just moved in, he used to watch Eastenders. I used to watch too. It was the time that Phill was beating up his wife with the red curly hair (forgot her name, she later went to Spain with their child or something). Anyway, I swear, I watched that show for 2 whole weeks without understanding anything but the images. I knew it was English as it was on the BBC, but could not understand what they said. My English wasn't that bad either. So I can imagine that dialect is dificult to understand, and certainly in novels if it is spelled how it sounds. Not to mention the weird words they use sometimes.
In the beginning I also had trouble understanding the woman who presents the snooker. She comes from the north. Oh, or people like Gerard. Incomprehensible.

My motto is always that if you understand the meaning of the sentence that you do not need to know the meaning of every particular word.
And for the rest I read 'linguistically' I call it, drawing from vocab that I have, in all languages.
Maybe that is though because I do not primarily read in my mother tongue, but in foreign languages and doing that means that you are per definition limited, certainly at the start. If you start looking up every single word in the beginning, you quickly lose the appetite for that language.

In the end, I have noticed, you start understanding words you didn't before, just because of context.

[paradoxical]

I knew some of the words on the list, such as:

fain
percipient
wonted
proclivity
prestidigitation

The rest, I didn't have a clue. I think the main challenge for modern readers of Hardy is that so many of the words he uses are specific to farming or else older words used to describe the natural features of the countryside. He really knew (and loved) farming and rural life.

My first introduction to Hardy was Return of the Native, and I had no idea what a heath looked like and had never heard of furze or reddle. His vivid descriptions of the windswept countryside had a powerful effect on me though, and the image of Clym walking the heath at night and Eustacia Vye (still one of my favorite characters in English literature) pining away and building her fires all seemed terribly romantic.

[kev67]

From chapters 51 and 52

rencounter - unplanned meeting or hostile encounter
mien - air or bearing expressive of attitude
bizarrerie - thing considered extremely strange and unusual
rick - stack of hay, corn, straw or similar material
pellucid - clear, transparent, limpid, lucid
discompose - disturb
autochtonous - indigenous, formed in present position
recrudescence - to break out anew

In addition there were two foreign language words in italics:

primum mobile - prime mover
Weltlust - joy of worldly things? Does not actually seem to be a commonly used German word.

There is also a word that Hardy himself deigns to explain:

'unhaling' - stripping off the thatch

[kev67]

Weltlust does not appear between Weltliteratur and Weltmacht in my large German-English dictionary. When I searched for it on the German version of google it comes up with a type of candle or something to do with an encyclopedia of economics 1773 to 1858.

You know something, I think Hardy made that word up.

[kiki1982]

It seems to be an obscure word even in German, not used very often, theological (or philosophical probably).

Zeno.org (via de.academic.ru)

die Weltlust: plur. inusit. in der Theologie, Vergnügen an irdischen, sinnlichen Gegenständen.

i.e.
plural, arch. in theology, pleasure in earthly/worldly, sensual things/objects.

On the way I learned that strawberries are a symbol of this. Hmmm, the strawberry that Alec gave to Tess to taste in the beginning. bad boy (slaps him on the hand).

So Hardy didn't make Weltlust up, but maybe it was known to the educated classes because of German philosophy? Or he just wanted to show he was very cultured :devil:.

It's just such nasty German word again that means so much and that cannot be expressed otherwise than in German. Like Schadenfreude or my favourite 'darstellen'. You can use it anywhere and everywhere in German and you'll be looking all over your brain how to bl**dy well say it in English. I tear my hair out sometimes. :p

[kev67]

It seems to be an obscure word even in German, not used very often, theological (or philosophical probably).

Zeno.org (via de.academic.ru)

die Weltlust: plur. inusit. in der Theologie, Vergnügen an irdischen, sinnlichen Gegenständen.

i.e.
plural, arch. in theology, pleasure in earthly/worldly, sensual things/objects.

So Hardy didn't make Weltlust up, but maybe it was known to the educated classes because of German philosophy? Or he just wanted to show he was very cultured :devil:.


I read somewhere that Hardy read a lot of Schopenhauer. Maybe it was a word he used.




It's just such nasty German word again that means so much and that cannot be expressed otherwise than in German. Like Schadenfreude or my favourite 'darstellen'. You can use it anywhere and everywhere in German and you'll be looking all over your brain how to bl**dy well say it in English. I tear my hair out sometimes. :p

I have a friend who sometimes uses the word Zeitgeist, but he pronounces it Zeetgeist. I have corrected him once or twice, assuming I pronounce it correctly myself.

[kev67]

louring - looking angry or sullen
loth - reluctant
invidiously - incurring resentment or unpopularity
spoliation act of despoiling or plundering
tole - laquered or enamelled metal

[kiki1982]

I read somewhere that Hardy read a lot of Schopenhauer. Maybe it was a word he used.



I have a friend who sometimes uses the word Zeitgeist, but he pronounces it Zeetgeist. I have corrected him once or twice, assuming I pronounce it correctly myself.

Well, you see, Schopenhauer could have done it.

As long as you pronounce it 'tsaitgaist', you're alright ;).


louring - looking angry or sullen
loth - reluctant
invidiously - incurring resentment or unpopularity
spoliation act of despoiling or plundering
tole - laquered or enamelled metal

Hmmm, 'louring' has something of the Dutch 'loeren' (pronounced 'looren') which means kind of looking but with malicious intent...

He was loth to means indeed he didn't really want to i.e. reluctant.

The rest I don't know but I'll have to remember 'tole' because that's no doubt what all those enamelled bowls were made of.

[kelby_lake]

I've never found myself stumbling too much when reading Hardy's novels, so I don't think the vocab is too distracting.