A cabinet of special words

or, words that are worth every letter

Sometimes when I’m reading, I come across a word that I haven’t encountered before. Printed there on the page, its unusual form makes me reach for a definition. Often, the word will turn out to be something mundane; perhaps a word I should already know, or one that, upon reading, I remember I have encountered before but have simply forgotten. But sometimes … sometimes it’ll be a special word, one that I’ll taste and think on and then file away in a special cabinet within my mind.

Such special words should, upon occasion, be extracted and polished and admired. They can—if the moment is just right—be loaned out and placed upon the page of some story, there for another to encounter and admire. Then, later, they can be scraped away and placed back into the cabinet.

Unsurprisingly, I am not alone in having such a cabinet. Fellow writer and good friend

L.J. Gearing

(Jamie) has his own¹ and suggested some time ago that a post on such words be worthwhile. So here is one such post, with Jamie kindly joining as guest. Of course, the cabinet is full of many, many words, and these are just a selection. Two from my own cabinet, two from Jamie’s.

With the end of semester, I have been somewhat time-poor this week. My entries below are rather short. Jamie has generously provided some longer and lovely thoughts on his chosen words.

Photo by Leon Gao on Unsplash

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From Nathan’s cabinet

LIMPID

and so limpid was the air that within this vapor of blended voices…

—Nabokov

As a biologist, my brain often encounters the word lipid. It is such a commonplace word that, upon seeing limpid, my mind seems to falter and stutter and I have to recall the meaning of this special word that has nothing at all to do with triacylglycerols. Ironic then, perhaps, that the definition of limpid is “something completely clear and transparent”.

I have often seen it used to describe someone’s eyes, which I find rather delightful. I employed it once, somewhere, in a tale of love and woe, speaking of “the viridian expanse behind each limpid eye”. In writing this, I have found myself somewhat frustrated that I don’t keep a more rigorous notebook of quotes from books. I am quite certain that Gene Wolfe used it many times in his literary masterpiece The Book of the New Sun, though of course, flicking through the book today, I could not find a single instance.

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AQUILINE

His face was a strong—a very strong—aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere.

—Bram Stoker

I tossed up between several zoological adjectives (is that even the correct term?) and then settled upon this one. Such words are quite wonderful once you get beyond the more common terms such as bovine and equine (sorry, no offence to cows and horses). When used to describe certain features, they can garner special status. Such is the case with aquiline, which although meaning “like an eagle” it is often used in literature to describe the curved nature of things (noses, for example). Aquiline has a graceful feel to it. When I read it, I pay attention and can more readily see what is being described. (The same can be said of the gorgeous pavonine, which means “of or like a peacock”).

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Well, that’s it from me for now. Everything hereon is courtesy of Jamie.

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From Jamie’s cabinet

LIMNED

Frowning, I picked it up and held it once more to the sun, but there was nothing to see; the light limned the edges, each side pale and crystalline, but the centre was the same dark, impenetrable void.

This excerpt comes from the second part of And it was lost by Nathan. I was lucky enough to read an earlier incarnation of this recently revitalised story; in addition to the tale itself (and its memorably horrific climax), the brilliant word at the centre of this sentence, limned, has stayed with me in the years since.

What was this mysterious word? I had never seen it before; I was beguiled, like the protagonist himself. It seemed to fit perfectly with the strange object that was being described. From the context, I could tell that those sharp edges were being defined by light—indeed, to limn is to illuminate something, as the sun did the stone; it can also mean to paint a picture of something, literally or metaphorically.

The best of words can be appreciated for their form and pronunciation, as well as their meaning, and so it is the case here. I revel in the phonetic superfluity of that silent n.

As such, I hoped one day to write something using this special word. The phrase gold-limned pupils once came to mind, though I am yet to find the right pair of eyes to describe in such a way. Instead, here is a place I found to use it:

My cheek caressed by sun-limned golden hair,
Her head atop my shoulder came to rest.

This is an opening couplet of an attempted sonnet entitled Disengagement. I was thinking of the way in which, from the perfect angle, sunlight can suddenly suffuse stray strands of hair, creating an almost iridescent halo about a person’s head. In such a context, limned seemed especially appropriate, given that its etymological roots lie in the illumination of manuscripts; imagine a monk reverentially painting aureoles behind the heads of saints.

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KOMOREBI

“KOMOREBI” is the Japanese word for the shimmering of light and shadows that is created by leaves swaying in the wind. It only exists once, at that moment.

This is a quote from the end credits of Perfect Days, directed by Wim Wenders and cowritten with Takuma Takasaki. I have the vague impression that I might have come across the word komorebi before, but it is now unforgettably entwined in my mind with this beautifully poignant cinematic experience.

The film follows the everyday life and routine of a Tokyo toilet attendant. This may not sound like the most dramatic of premises—I certainly thought so, at first, but I was totally captivated when I saw the trailer. The mood, the music and the imagery all spoke to me. For the most part, it is a quiet and gentle, almost meditative affair; it is such a pleasure to spend time in the company of the main character. (Kōji Yakusho deservedly won the best actor prize at the Cannes film festival in 2023 for his portrayal.) As the audience, we get to share in the satisfaction he takes in his job and the joy that he finds in small moments throughout his day. One of his rituals is to take pictures of the sun-dappled canopy over his favourite lunch spot. Each day, his camera captures one ephemeral moment; he uses black-and-white film, emphasising the quality of the light filtering through the leaves.

One of the most fascinating linguistic curiosities, which can only be encountered in a foreign language, is the untranslatable word—not untranslatable in the sense that such a word cannot be defined in one’s own language, but rather that there is no direct one-to-one correspondence, no perfectly elegant pairing of this-equals-that².

We have to rely on longer descriptions—whole sentences or even paragraphs—which are coloured by perspective and differ from source to source. As such, there remains a sense of ambiguity, of unknowability; as outsiders, we may approach an understanding of the underlying concept, but never quite reach it.

Of course, English is adept at adopting foreign words as its own—problem solved!—but some are never absorbed, retaining their untranslatable status and a concomitant sense of mystery, even if we try to use them. I like to think that such words have evolved perfectly with their environments, after thousands of years of natural, linguistic and cultural selection. Why should they fit another habitat?

Nevertheless, I have completed a little haiku, with komorebi as its title. The opening three words are not my own, but they seeded the rest; since watching the film, I find myself looking up to the trees more often and so I was put in mind of those leaves gently dancing under falling photons. I hope that perhaps I have captured something of the word:

Luscious joyful green,
Imbued with sprinkled sunlight,
Flutters at its touch.

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1. Jamie currently resides in Germany and he offers the following: Given that a Wunderkammer is a cabinet of curiosities, perhaps that makes this cabinet a Wörterkammer?

2. Edit from Nathan: I actually have a box of these in my office at work. It contains some wonderful phrases. Not sure why I didn’t include one here…