Came across this today in a discussion about Joyce's Ulysses:
"Aside from the preponderant gossip and banter, in this episode both great oratory and nauseatingly flowery writing receive extended attention — the latter to hilarious effect, as Simon Dedalus and other layabouts damn the purple prose splenitively before, parched by their exertions, inevitably adjourning to the pub."
My various dictionaries don't include it and online, several dictionaries simply quote a single use of it (does that make it a hapax legomenon?):
Shakespeare: "Even and smooth as seemed the temperament of the nonchalant, languid Virginian -- not splenitive or rash."
Obviously derived from the word spleen, apparently it is also written sometimes as splenetic.
But splenitive is a much lovelier word, it seems to me. In fact splenitive is splendid. Is there a relationship there?
Splenitive
-
- Grand Panjandrum
- Posts: 1145
- Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2009 3:21 am
- Location: Melbourne
- Slava
- Great Grand Panjandrum
- Posts: 8086
- Joined: Thu Sep 28, 2006 9:31 am
- Location: Finger Lakes, NY
Re: Splenitive
Great word. No relation to splendid.
Life is like playing chess with chessmen who each have thoughts and feelings and motives of their own.
Return to “Good Word Suggestions”
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: Semrush [Bot] and 11 guests