Fun With Faux Words
I love it when authors make up words. I love it even more when an author creates words that appear so legite readers read through sentences and paragraphs, sometimes maybe even an entire book without once stopping to think, Hey, wait a minute. Is that a real word? What about that one?
This happened to me, somewhat anyway, last February when I picked up David Foster Wallace's novel Infinite Jest. I read to page 200 and then started over. I hadn't put forth the effort and attention it demanded. Let's just say it's not a light read. In this case seeing is knowing what's up. The novel is 1079 pages short, this includes a footnotes section (roughly 100 pages) located at the back of the book.
DFW's prose is wicked to say the least, plus the man's a lexicographical machine. Here's a brief list of DFW argot. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I could not find any of these words in the dictionary:
gurutical
ascapartic
soggify
egregulous (egregious?)
semion
metafilmic
omniwetness
kertwanking
unopportune (inopportune?)
woppsed-up
UPDATE:
yickily
unsafetied
posted by M@ers @ 8:04 PM
11 Comments:
i got to this page googling "ascapartic", he is such a genius
i got to this page googling egregulous i assumed is was a typo. pretty much it could be. egregulous doesnt add anything semantically or phonetically interesting to the word "egregious" anyway, right?
I too found it by googling ascapartic!
Have been using the OED online to wade through...
Also had to reread the first 100 pages or so because I spent them being too annoyed with DFW to pay close enough attention. Then I got sucked in, of course.
ascapartic: Ascapart or Ascupart was an enormous giant, thirty feet high, who carried off sir Bevis, his wife Josian, his sword Morglay, and his steed Arundel, under his arm. Sir Bevis afterwards made Ascapart his slave, to run beside his horse. The effigy of sir Bevis is on the city gates of Southampton.—rayton: Polylbion, ii. (1612).
SO it totally makes sense calleing big steeply "this ascapartic bathroom-mag journalist"
horay
Wondering: eustacian - pg. 308 - is that meant to be eustachian?? (im quite sure it must be in the context it was used, however, still curious, therefore posting a commie). If so or if not, is Wallace purposefully using this(and other) 'typos', or bad editing abound?? - Yet his verbal dexterity gives the impression that Wallace would not allow such said typos . . . . hmmm??? just a thought and query
Gurutical should become a word, the adjectival form of guru.
Neologisms like soggify, metafilmic, yickily, unsafetied and omniwetness convey clear meanings.
Kertwanging and woppsed-up are part of Wallace's proprietary lexicon and no other writer can use them without alluding to Wallace.
Kathy's etimology of ascapartic is beautiful.
I suspect egregulous and unopportune were mouthed by characters such as Orin or Lenz, who frequently bungled polysyllabic words. Infinite Jest is rife with examples of false or shallow erudition, as well as depictions of the effects of cocaine and marijuana on articulate speech.
Eustacian is an alternate spelling of eustachian; according to Google it appears 10,500 times on the net -- 10,501 once I publish this comment.
I was googling egregulous! which fyi is on p.272, and comes from DFW's narration, though he's sort of paraphrasing Gately here
I too found this page googling egregulous.
I do not think these are typos I somehow suspect it's DFW's weird attempt some esoteric irony.
I googled egregulous too.
How odd...
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