I’m afraid that this may be a completely boneheaded question; it must be asked.
I hear terms that seem to be fairly standard for describing parts of human bodies such as bedroom eyes, Greek nose, Rose-petal lips, and so on.
Then I think to myself that there are also myriad variations on the different body parts that we have—virtually all of which I have no real way to describe.
So I must ask: is there some sort of fairly standard usage for terms that describe parts of the body?
More importantly, is there an English-language reference that contains these in an efficient format?
Now, before you make the recommendation, I’ve looked through Roget’s reasonably closely (along w/ the Random House Word Menu) and for all the various categories of words they have, I still fail to find one for Human Body & Parts Adjectives.
Any help? (Other than moving this to Cafe Society, if that’s more appropriate.)
If I understand you right, the idea is distressing. A standard manual of adjectives would limit the beauty and imagination of the language for writers and speakers. I really hope I misunderstood.
I don’t think it’s distressing. It’s handy to be able to say that someone has a Roman nose rather than saying that they have a fairly narrow, hooked one.
Of course, it would be wise to use the terms sparingly, but that’s true of all writing.
Respectfully, that’s insane. If “bedroom eyes” has no meaning, then what is the point of using it?
Just for fun, I found something really funny while googling for a poorly thought out analogy that I decided to abandon. I couldn’t let this illustration go, however, because it is too damn cool: http://members.tripod.com/edward_mallon/misc/images/ba_west.jpg
I haven’t been able to lay my hands on a copy, but from the look-inside feature on Amazon.com, it looks a lot like the Word Menu, also a great book.
Do you have a copy? In the Word Menu it gives a lot of words for parts of the eye, for example, but not things like “bedroom eyes,” or, hell!, “hazel.” So for noses, for example, you may find mucus membrane, but I’m not so sure there are lists that make it easy to find types of noses, e.g. Roman, Greek, aquiline (sp?), etc.
I bought it about a year after it came out. Yes, it gives terms such as “bedroom eyes,” sloe-eyed, etc. I think powells.com has a few copies. I don’t know where you’re located. If you have a decent sized library around you may want to check it out before you plunk down the money.
Although I love this book, it is far from exhaustive and there are a few misses. One extremely silly omission occurred in the first edition. That’s a thumb on the pedestal, with an arrow pointing to the lunula. That word was not to be found in the book.
