A lot of the novel takes place in the Dutch settlements in 17th-century New York, so words like MIJNHEER and PATROON (a landowner granted manorial rights under old Dutch law) are all over the place. SCHOUT# and COMMIS#, Dutch words for low-ranking officials, crop up a lot too ( Read more... )

  From Jean Toomer's Cane: "She says all manner of snidy things about him, and swears that she'll never go out again when he is along."

 There's lots of Scrabbly goodness in The Mayor of Casterbridge. It opens with Michael Henchard drunkenly auctioning off his wife for five guineas after overindulging in rum-laced FURMITY (a dish made from boiled wheat - also FURMENTY, FRUMENTY, FROMENTY, or FURMETY, but there are no Collins-only variants as far as I know). After a whole bunch of ( Read more... )

From Silas Marner: "Mr. Crackenthorp, too, while he admonished Silas that his money had probably been taken from him because he thought too much of it, and never came to church, enforced the doctrine by a present of pigs' pettitoes, well calculated to dissipate unfounded prejudices against the clerical character." PETTITOES apparently means pigs' ( Read more... )

Maybe I'll make this a regular feature - 'Scrabble words' that I come across in reading. I read July's People today, and like many African novels, it's chockful of Collins goodness ( Read more... )