# Authors and the unusual words they like to overuse **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 7, 2014, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-and-the-unusual-words-they-like-to-overuse/680731 "2014-02-07T03:31:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2014, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-and-the-unusual-words-they-like-to-overuse/680731/82 "2014-02-12T11:46:39Z")
I only have one. I almost stopped reading Pat Conroy’s “The Prince of Tides” because every five pages or so a character was described as ‘feckless’. Just once I wanted someone to be fecked. mmm ---
**Author:** ![bldysabba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecccb3/32.png) [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2014, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-and-the-unusual-words-they-like-to-overuse/680731/83 "2014-02-12T13:37:42Z")
> [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](#): > > I only have one. I almost stopped reading Pat Conroy’s “The Prince of Tides” because every five pages or so a character was described as ‘feckless’. > > Just once I wanted someone to be fecked. > mmm The adventure of the Feckled band. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2014, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-and-the-unusual-words-they-like-to-overuse/680731/84 "2014-02-12T14:20:14Z")
Dan Simmons has used the phrase “Lapis Lazuli” to describe the color of things in various books. When I read Hyperion for the first time, I didn’t have the slightest idea what the hell he was talking about. Apparently, (now that the net is a thing and I can look it up) it’s a blue-ish/purple rock. As to why the hell he couldn’t just say “the sky was dark blue with a hint of purple”, I will never know. SR Donaldson had some words he overused in the _Gap_ series, but I don’t want to slog through 2,000 pages again just to find them. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2014, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-and-the-unusual-words-they-like-to-overuse/680731/85 "2014-02-12T14:22:52Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Dan Simmons has used the phrase “Lapis Lazuli” to describe the color of things in various books. When I read Hyperion for the first time, I didn’t have the slightest idea what the hell he was talking about. Apparently, (now that the net is a thing and I can look it up) it’s a blue-ish/purple rock. As to why the hell he couldn’t just say “the sky was dark blue with a hint of purple”, I will never know. > > SR Donaldson had some words he overused in the _Gap_ series, but I don’t want to slog through 2,000 pages again just to find them. Check this out [The Well-Tempered Plot Device: Nick Lowe](http://news.ansible.co.uk/plotdev.html) "The rules are simple. Each player takes a different volume of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, and at the word “go” all open their books at random and start leafing through, scanning the pages. The winner is the first player to find the word “clench”. It’s a fast, exciting game – sixty seconds is unusually drawn-out – and can be varied, if players get too good, with other favourite Donaldson words like wince, flinch, gag, rasp, exigency, mendacity, articulate, macerate, mien, limn, vertigo, cynosure… It’s a great way to get thrown out of bookshops. Good racing! " ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2014, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-and-the-unusual-words-they-like-to-overuse/680731/86 "2014-02-12T14:34:45Z")
[quote=“vontsira, post:52, topic:680731”] Assorted Turtledove stuff – I’m a fan, though a sometimes reluctant one… Harry Turtledove – an admirer of de Camp, I gather – borrows and makes much use of “futter”, in his _Darkness_ novel series, of which I am among the apparently relatively few lovers. The _Darkness_ universe has a medieval-type feel to it, so the word seems to “fit” there. According to Wiktionary, Richard F. Burton coined it. I’ve probably run across it in my readings of Burton (especially the Arabian Nights, which seems prime ground for this word), but I can’t recall him using it. [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/futter](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/futter) ---
**Author:** ![Catamount](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/catamount/32/2840_2.png) [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2014, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-and-the-unusual-words-they-like-to-overuse/680731/87 "2014-02-12T19:25:57Z")
> [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](#): > > I only have one. I almost stopped reading Pat Conroy’s “The Prince of Tides” because every five pages or so a character was described as ‘feckless’. > > Just once I wanted someone to be fecked. > mmm Everyone needs to be fecked once in a while. Going about feckless for too long is just reckless. ---
**Author:** ![bldysabba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecccb3/32.png) [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2014, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-and-the-unusual-words-they-like-to-overuse/680731/88 "2014-02-12T22:29:10Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > Check this out [The Well-Tempered Plot Device: Nick Lowe](http://news.ansible.co.uk/plotdev.html) > > "The rules are simple. Each player takes a different volume of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, and at the word “go” all open their books at random and start leafing through, scanning the pages. The winner is the first player to find the word “clench”. It’s a fast, exciting game – sixty seconds is unusually drawn-out – and can be varied, if players get too good, with other favourite Donaldson words like wince, flinch, gag, rasp, exigency, mendacity, articulate, macerate, mien, limn, vertigo, cynosure… It’s a great way to get thrown out of bookshops. Good racing! > " Hahah. That’s awesome. I wonder if there’s a Game room thread in here somewhere. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2014, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-and-the-unusual-words-they-like-to-overuse/680731/89 "2014-02-12T23:01:24Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Some science-fiction or fantasy series that I only vaguely remember, because I think it was thirty years ago or so that I read it, used the word “roiling” a noticeable amount. > > It may have been only once or twice per book, but I came to the conclusion that a word like “roiling” should be used at most once in a writer’s entire career. > > (Actually, that word seems to be more popular in such genres nowadays, so probably nobody else will have noticed it in the author I’m thinking of and I’m doomed never to find out what this long-forgotten book series was. Woe is me.) > [@JohnT](#): > > SR Donaldson had some words he overused […] > [@Andy L](#): > > "Each player takes a different volume of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, and at the word “go” all open their books at random and start leafing through, scanning the pages. The winner is the first player to find the word “clench”. It’s a fast, exciting game – sixty seconds is unusually drawn-out – and can be varied, if players get too good, with other favourite Donaldson words like wince, flinch, gag, rasp, exigency, mendacity, articulate, macerate, mien, limn, vertigo, cynosure… " That’s it! _THAT’S IT!!_ **That’s** the guy I remember using “roil” so much! [The Illearth War](http://books.google.com/books?id=grMKpm5Q7YsC&pg=PA91): “His expression was constantly roiled” [Chaos and Order](http://books.google.com/books?id=YHlYqusanp8C&pg=PT201): “Holt’s aura roiled with agitation” [The Wounded Land](http://www.ibooksonline.com/96/Covenant_4_The_Wounded_Land_split_004.html): “Apprehension roiled in her” And now everybody seems to be using the word, at least in similar literary genres. What has Donaldson unleashed upon the world? Anyway, thanks SDMB for solving my “what was that book” mystery! ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2014, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-and-the-unusual-words-they-like-to-overuse/680731/90 "2014-02-12T23:28:41Z")
Patrick O’Brian – all of these were overused more and more as time went on, until at the end of his life they could be found on nearly every other page – _dear_ (an Irishism which eventually bled into everyone’s speech no matter the nationality, plus the narrator’s – ‘the dear breeze’, ‘the dear carriage’. This annoyed me more because he wasn’t Irish. \*absurd \* used as, apparently, an idiosyncratic intensifier ‘absurdly white’, ‘absurd beauty’ _important_ where most people would use something like ‘severe’, or ‘large’ – “important holes”, “important fractures” Maybe he just stopped rewriting. ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2014, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-and-the-unusual-words-they-like-to-overuse/680731/91 "2014-02-13T00:01:10Z")
Diana Gabaldon uses the word “susurrus” at least once per book. In one of the later Outlander books she loses control and uses it at least seven times. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-and-the-unusual-words-they-like-to-overuse/680731.md?page=4)