Words in Historical Fiction
The title word, absquatulate, showed up in a historical
fiction I was reviewing. The word stopped me cold. My first thought was a
misspelling, the second that someone's finger got tangled up on the keyboard,
and the third, maybe it's a real word that I never heard of. I looked it up on
google:
"Absquatulate is a deeply silly
word that means to make off with something or someone. Why say a thief ran away
with your money when it's much more fun to say he absquatulated with it?
The
word absquatulate came out of
an odd fad in America in the 1830s for making playful words that sounded
vaguely Latin. Bloviate (speak pompously)
and discombobulate (make confused)
are two other pseudo-Latin coinages from that era. Absquatulate takes
the word squat and adds the
prefix ab- "off,
away" and the verb ending -ulate to
suggest getting up and leaving quickly. It's hardly ever used nowadays, mostly
showing up as an example of an absurd word."
I
even looked it up in my normal home dictionary and did not find it. Which is
the point of this blog. When writing historical fiction, it may be fun to use
old-fashioned, out of fashion, obscure words, however, they ought to be
decipherable when viewed in context.
It’s fun to try to write dialogue that matches
your time period, “Whilst I await your response, kind sir,…”
How about dastardly?
I find that a fun word, which certainly works in a historical setting.
Twenty-three
skidoo,
fits well in the 20s and we know what it means.
By the way, absquatulate was used incorrectly
in the story I was reading. The character simply left; he did not run off with
anything.
Here are a few more obscure words to enhance your vocabulary: skirr, epicaricacy, acapnotic, alamode (probably not what
you’re thinking), laciniate, lugehovey.
Happy writing.
Veronica H.
Hart is the author of six novels, several award winning, and one sci-fi due out
any time now, Silent
Autumn, from Champagne Books. She
recently formed her own company to produce her two historical novels: Elena
– the Girl with the Piano (now available
on Amazon), and The Reluctant Daughters, (coming very soon.)
1 comments:
I just read that word yesterday in a free copy of Reader's Digest that came in the mail. It was part of the Word Power quiz and even though I got it right, I was guessing because I'd never seen it before. I can't believe twice in two days!
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