This strange book by John Cowper Powys has already enhanced my vocabulary, even though I’m only on p. 47. So far I’ve encountered
- palimpsest
- unction
- squinnied
- vellum
- sacerdotal
- gonfalon
- captious
Powys seems to positively revel in the use of obscure language, as evidenced in the following rather extraordinary passage:
Mr. Urquhart smiled and leant back in his chair. He drained his wine-cup to the dregs, and with half-shut, malignant eyes, full of a strange inward unction, he squinnied at his interlocutor. The lines of his face, as he sat there contemplating his imaginary History, took to themselves the emphatic dignity of a picture by Holbein. The parchment-like skin stretched itself tightly and firmly round the bony structure of the cheeks, as though it had been vellum over a mysterious folio. A veil of almost sacerdotal cunning hovered, like a drooping gonfalon, over the man’s heavy eyelids and the loose wrinkles that gathered beneath his eyes. (p. 46)