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NETTING SOME BUTTERFLY WORDS

One of my readers in Fairview, N.C., Patricia H. Jenkins, sat down recently to read a book. She kept getting up. After a while she wrote me a cranky letter.

The book was "River Horse, A Voyage Across America" by William Least Heat Moon. She wrote: "I am disgusted and appalled by having to look up a word every fourth or fifth sentence."

She enclosed a partial list of words she had stumbled over before she was halfway through the book: cinereous, foudroyant, plutological, disquisitions, esurience, edacious, insipidities, debouchure, mumphisly, omphalos, ruction, chert, draff, quiddity, atrabilious, objurgations, brummagem, lazarette, compeer, tumuli and macaronically.

Lest you expire of curiosity, it should be said at once that cinereous means like ashes; something that is foudroyant is dazzling; disquisitions are formal writings or speeches; esurience is a greedy hunger; edacious is voracious; insipidities are dull and tasteless expressions; debouchure is the act of emerging from a shut-in place; one's omphalos is one's navel; a ruction is an uproarious disturbance; draff are the dregs of malt left after brewing; a quiddity is a trifling distinction; to be atrabilious is to be melancholy, morose or cross; objurgations are strong rebukes; a brummagem thing is cheap and gaudy; a lazarette is a storage space in the stern of a boat; a compeer is a companion or comrade; writing that is macaronic is a mish-mash of languages. There will be a quiz on Tuesday.

I could not locate "plutological" and "mumphisly." They have gone into hiding. I pass over "chert" and "tumuli" as words of art. Chert is a form of silicate, and tumuli are ancient burial mounds.

Yes, thanks to Reader Jenkins, we are off again on the troubling topic of "hard words." Columnist Westbrook Pegler called them "out-of-town" words. I think of them as butterfly words, the lovely Lepidoptera of language. What should we do with our collections?

One school of thought says, use them! Not one reader in a thousand may grasp the meaning of "atrabilious" or "foudroyant" or "debouchure." Never mind! Such an objection is immaterial if not irrelevant. A writer's duty is not to the reader, but to himself. We must give our readers the whole shebang, holding nothing back. Does the reader stumble over an unfamiliar word? Let the dullard scramble to his feet and stop whining. To the dictionary, go!

Another school of thought says that the first purpose of writing is to communicate. Effective communication demands a common vocabulary -- a vocabulary based upon the writer's assumption of his audience. We should search for a middle ground, using words and allusions that are neither over a reader's head nor beneath his scorn. We may reasonably assume that readers of Bridge World know a "void" when they see one. It is not necessary to define "catadromous" for subscribers to the Ichthyologists Gazette.

Suppose our aim is to communicate with a general audience. Let us assume for our purposes a fair command of the English language, coupled with at least some higher education. Form an editorial judgment, if you please, on these examples:

"The most recent evidence of Bill Clinton's antinomian morality has been provided by longtime friend Johnny Chung."

"The administration says it wanted to teach the hispid Hussein about the primacy of human rights."

"The historians agree on much -- that Jefferson was a genius and a polymath."

"Writing in The Washington Post three years later, the famously dirigiste Fallows asserted that The Economist purveys ..."

"With Bush dragging the GOP leftward into compassionate conservatism, it would be political seppuku for Democrats to nominate Bill Bradley."

"The rape had terribly cicatrized and battered the emotions of the adolescent Hortense."

What was gained by "antinomian" that could not have been better served by "unconventional"? To be "hispid" is to "rough" or "bristly." How many of this columnist's readers grasped his meaning? A "polymath" is a person of great and diversified learning. Was there a clearer way of conveying the thought? A "dirigiste" is one who believes in economic control by the state. Was this clear to readers of The Boston Globe last summer? Was a letter-writer just showing off in New York magazine when he spoke of "seppuku"? Why not at least "hara-kiri" if not simply "suicide"?

Very well. I have now seen the butterfly seppuku, and I will leave it pinned to a tray of paraffin wax on the wall.