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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...
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
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by kiki1982
I'm glad you're reading Tess as well.
Yes, crumby was actually meant as a compliment. According to my Penguin edition, it means "nice".Quote:
Originally Posted by kev67
haha, that's not what I meant. I would also spit out my coffee... ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by kev67
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. :)
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).Quote:
Originally Posted by paradoxical
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.
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.
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 else found out what it means, along with a few other phrases.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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