Tag: New Words (Page 6 of 20)

Seraglio – the place of a Turkish sultan or noble; formerly the palace of the sultan of Turkey at Constantinople

“There stood the broad-wheeled wains and the antique ploughs and the harrows;

There were the folds for the sheep; and there, in his feathered seraglio,

Strutted the lordly turkey, and crowed the cock with the selfsame

Voice that in ages of old had startled the penitent Peter.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline

Mellifluous – flowing sweetly and smoothly; honeyed; said of words, sounds, etc.

“[The two excepts of Hiawatha in this volume] show the poem to be mellifluous, prettily and sometimes even beautifully imagistic, but shallow; a pleasant literary-anthropological tour de force but nothing more.”

Lawrence Buell, in the introduction to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Selected Poems

Effete – barren; no longer capable of producing, as an animal, a soil, etc; hence, exhausted, barren, sterile, inefficient though age, use, or decay

“Hawthorne’s work is shot through with shamefaced apologies, partly but only partly tongue-in-cheek, for the effeteness of romancing.

Lawrence Buell, in the introduction to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Selected Poems

Primeval – original; primitive; belonging to the first or earliest period

“This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,

Bearded with moss, and in garments free, indistinct in the twilight,

Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,

Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.”

Evangeline, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Pathos – suffering; the quality in something experienced or observed which arouses feelings of pity, sorry, sympathy, or compassion

“…the more keenly tragic pathos of “The Cross of Snow” (1879)”.

Lawrence Buell, in the introduction to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Selected Poems

Jejune – not nourishing; barren; not satisfying; not interesting; dull and flat

Imbroglio – a confused heap; an involved and confusing situation; state of confusion and complication; a confused misunderstanding or disagreement; entanglement

“These experiences gave [Longfellow] a deep first-hand understanding of love’s frustrations and sorrows. Such experiences underlie much of his work, including some jejune stuff like the posturings of the lovesick protagonist in Hyperion, but also his best, like the affectionately comic imbroglio in Miles Standish, the somber tenderness of Evangeline, and the more keenly tragic pathos of “The Cross of Snow” (1879), Longfellow’s sonnet written in memory of his second wife’s death.”

Lawrence Buell, in the introduction to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Selected Poems

Quixotic – like or befitting Don Quixote; extravagantly chivalrous or romantically idealistic; visionary; impractical or impracticable

“On a more earthy and immediate level, [Longfellow] was shattered by his first wife’s death after miscarriage during his second European trip (1835); he endured years of frustration (1836-42) before his second wife-to-be consented to return his quixotic passion with anything more than friendship; and after nearly twenty years of happily married life thereafter, he was devastated again by her death in a freak accident in their home, when her gown caught fire.”

Lawrence Buell, in the introduction to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Selected Poems

Munificence – very generous in giving; lavish; characterized by great generosity

“[Longfellow] could not, he wrote his father, argue well enough to be a successful lawyer; he was not good enough to be a minister; and as to medicine, “I utterly and absolutely detest it.” He pleaded instead to be allowed to take a postgraduate year at Harvard to study literature – and write.

This vocational crisis was luckily resolved by the munificence of another Bowdoin trustee, who had been so impressed with young Longfellow’s translation of Horace’s odes that he proposed that the professorship of foreign languages he was donating to Bowdoin be offered to Longfellow.”

Lawrence Buell, in the introduction to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Selected Poems

Obloquy – verbal abuse of a person or thing, censure or vituperation*, especially when wide-spread or general

Purveyor – one who purveys (to purchase and supply provisions, especially for a number of people)

Verity – truthfulness

” “With me,” Longfellow once noted, “all deep impressions are silent ones. I like to live on, and enjoy them, without telling those around me that I do enjoy them.” Remarks like these suggest that the image of Longfellow as a comfortable, reassuring white-bearded purveyor of the accepted verities – the basis of both his late-Victorian fame and his mid-twentieth-century obloquy – has mistaken the surface for the totality of his mind.”

Lawrence Buell, in the introduction to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Selected Poems

*Vituperate – to speak abusively to to or about; to berate; to revile

(Wow, that was a lot of new words at once!)