A Weekend's Worth of Drabbles
My usual Monday drabble series, penned this time from the comfort of my desk at home. (Yay, mental health days!)
fetid \FET-id; FEE-tid\, adjective:
Having an offensive smell; stinking.
"The air was fetid, heavy as the breath of a large animal."
-Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, Bad Dreams
"He grew up between the river and the vineyard-covered slopes, between the fetid smell of the tannery and the fine aroma of crushed grapes."
-Patrice Debré, Louis Pasteur (translated by Elborg Forster)
Etymology
Fetid derives from Latin fetidus, from fetere, "to stink."
Synonyms
noisome, rank, rancid, smelly, stinking.
gimcrack \JIM-krak\, noun:
A showy but useless or worthless object; a gewgaw.
adjective>:
Tastelessly showy; cheap; gaudy.
Examples
"Yet the set is more than a collection of pretty gimcracks."
-Frank Rich, Hot Seat
"In those cities most self-conscious about their claim to be part of English history, like Oxford or Bath, the shops where you could have bought a dozen nails, home-made cakes or had a suit run up, have shut down and been replaced with places selling teddy bears, T-shirts and gimcrack souvenirs."
-Jeremy Paxman, The English: A Portrait of a People
"And as for coincidences in books -- there's something cheap and sentimental about the device; it can't help always seeming aesthetically gimcrack."
-Peter Brooks, "Obsessed with the Hermit of Croisset," York Times, March 10, 1985
Etymology
The origin of gimcrack is uncertain. It is perhaps an alteration of Middle English gibecrake, "a slight or flimsy ornament."
And this is one of Felak's favorite words! (The noun form "banality," anyway.) And one of the examples is from one of my favorite authors!
banal \BAY-nul; buh-NAL; buh-NAHL (British)\, adjective:
Commonplace; trivial; hackneyed; trite.
Examples
"Perhaps it's just the arrogant, knowing way in which reporters ask the most banal of questions."
-Alfred Alcorn, Murder in the Museum of Man
"How does the poet transform his banal thoughts (are not most thoughts banal?) into such stunning forms, into beauty?"
-Joyce Carol Oates, "Speaking of Books: The Formidable W.B. Yeats," New York Times, September 7, 1969
"All that her late companions can draw from her is the banal declaration, that she 'never knew what happiness was before.'"
-New Monthly Magazine, LIX. 458, 1840
Etymology
Banal comes from the Old French word ban, an edict, which had the adjective banal, "of or relating to compulsory feudal service," which evolved to signify "merely obligatory," hence "commonplace."
In his Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations, Charles Harrington Elster notes, "Banal is a word of many pronunciations, each of which has its outspoken and often intractable proponents. Though it may pain some to hear it, let the record show that BAY-nul is the variant preferred by most authorities (including me)."
Please be forewarned that there is blood and violence in this drabble series. Proceed with caution.
The Price I Paid
I. Angband
The air of Angband screams as the whip rends it, to fall across my back, unzipping my flesh with only a whisper. For I do not--will not--scream.
I have lost count of the marks upon my flesh, a body that has become but a wound. The smell of my fetid flesh-rotting upon my back-comforts me at night, for it convinces me that I have not yet died. I live still, to complete my quest, to recover from Morgoth the Silmarils.
Another scream and a whisper-and tears spring to my eyes.
It is worth it.
II. Nirnaeth Arnoediad
Who would have thought that grief would become a banality?
Who would have thought that we-the People of the Light-would cease to wonder at tears, would cease comforting those in mourning. No one stops to wonder why a general as stoic as I falls to his knees among the dead and weeps, why-silently-I strike with my blade at the cloud of vultures, decapitating one and leaving its blood to mingle with yours, in senseless anger, for it does what it must. As do I.
And so I sacrificed my greatest friend. Why?
For Light.
III. The Chasm
I hold it, at last, this treasure of my father’s. The Light of the Trees, we’d believed we’d pursued, but this does not do them justice, this gimcrack bauble sizzling in my hand.
It does not soothe; it burns.
I see now why the Valar had been puzzled by Atar’s reluctance to relinquish it.
They think pain of the flesh is unbearable? Laughable!
And I do: manic, agonized laughter that stabs the air. Blades, whips, hammers rending flesh; the dizzying circles of carrion birds: These were the prices I had paid. It is not worth it!
And so I fall.
fetid \FET-id; FEE-tid\, adjective:
Having an offensive smell; stinking.
"The air was fetid, heavy as the breath of a large animal."
-Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, Bad Dreams
"He grew up between the river and the vineyard-covered slopes, between the fetid smell of the tannery and the fine aroma of crushed grapes."
-Patrice Debré, Louis Pasteur (translated by Elborg Forster)
Etymology
Fetid derives from Latin fetidus, from fetere, "to stink."
Synonyms
noisome, rank, rancid, smelly, stinking.
gimcrack \JIM-krak\, noun:
A showy but useless or worthless object; a gewgaw.
adjective>:
Tastelessly showy; cheap; gaudy.
Examples
"Yet the set is more than a collection of pretty gimcracks."
-Frank Rich, Hot Seat
"In those cities most self-conscious about their claim to be part of English history, like Oxford or Bath, the shops where you could have bought a dozen nails, home-made cakes or had a suit run up, have shut down and been replaced with places selling teddy bears, T-shirts and gimcrack souvenirs."
-Jeremy Paxman, The English: A Portrait of a People
"And as for coincidences in books -- there's something cheap and sentimental about the device; it can't help always seeming aesthetically gimcrack."
-Peter Brooks, "Obsessed with the Hermit of Croisset," York Times, March 10, 1985
Etymology
The origin of gimcrack is uncertain. It is perhaps an alteration of Middle English gibecrake, "a slight or flimsy ornament."
And this is one of Felak's favorite words! (The noun form "banality," anyway.) And one of the examples is from one of my favorite authors!
banal \BAY-nul; buh-NAL; buh-NAHL (British)\, adjective:
Commonplace; trivial; hackneyed; trite.
Examples
"Perhaps it's just the arrogant, knowing way in which reporters ask the most banal of questions."
-Alfred Alcorn, Murder in the Museum of Man
"How does the poet transform his banal thoughts (are not most thoughts banal?) into such stunning forms, into beauty?"
-Joyce Carol Oates, "Speaking of Books: The Formidable W.B. Yeats," New York Times, September 7, 1969
"All that her late companions can draw from her is the banal declaration, that she 'never knew what happiness was before.'"
-New Monthly Magazine, LIX. 458, 1840
Etymology
Banal comes from the Old French word ban, an edict, which had the adjective banal, "of or relating to compulsory feudal service," which evolved to signify "merely obligatory," hence "commonplace."
In his Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations, Charles Harrington Elster notes, "Banal is a word of many pronunciations, each of which has its outspoken and often intractable proponents. Though it may pain some to hear it, let the record show that BAY-nul is the variant preferred by most authorities (including me)."
Please be forewarned that there is blood and violence in this drabble series. Proceed with caution.
The Price I Paid
I. Angband
The air of Angband screams as the whip rends it, to fall across my back, unzipping my flesh with only a whisper. For I do not--will not--scream.
I have lost count of the marks upon my flesh, a body that has become but a wound. The smell of my fetid flesh-rotting upon my back-comforts me at night, for it convinces me that I have not yet died. I live still, to complete my quest, to recover from Morgoth the Silmarils.
Another scream and a whisper-and tears spring to my eyes.
It is worth it.
II. Nirnaeth Arnoediad
Who would have thought that grief would become a banality?
Who would have thought that we-the People of the Light-would cease to wonder at tears, would cease comforting those in mourning. No one stops to wonder why a general as stoic as I falls to his knees among the dead and weeps, why-silently-I strike with my blade at the cloud of vultures, decapitating one and leaving its blood to mingle with yours, in senseless anger, for it does what it must. As do I.
And so I sacrificed my greatest friend. Why?
For Light.
III. The Chasm
I hold it, at last, this treasure of my father’s. The Light of the Trees, we’d believed we’d pursued, but this does not do them justice, this gimcrack bauble sizzling in my hand.
It does not soothe; it burns.
I see now why the Valar had been puzzled by Atar’s reluctance to relinquish it.
They think pain of the flesh is unbearable? Laughable!
And I do: manic, agonized laughter that stabs the air. Blades, whips, hammers rending flesh; the dizzying circles of carrion birds: These were the prices I had paid. It is not worth it!
And so I fall.