strange radiation: the pool of radiance archive

Adventures with an unreliable narrator.

Dec 9 03: etymological corner!

A joyous event transpired today. I finally got my copy of Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary! I’d been looking for a decent copy all over the internet for years. And lo, I found one, and it’s a like-new hardcover of the 1994 revised edition, and I’m so happy.

Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words was compiled by Josefa Heifetz Byrne, who was (a) the daughter of Jascha Heifetz and (b) an accomplished violinist and composer in her own right and (c) a logophile. I first heard about it when it was mentioned by Phil Foglio in a lettercol for his comic Buck Godot, Zap Gun for Hire. Which is a lovely bit of SF, equal parts hilarious and inventive, with the occasional burst of “wow, smart little twist there, Phil.” Oh, and also a bunch of space ninjas during this one bit. Loved the ninjas. And a species that looks like Churchy LaFemme, sort of, only with fezzes. I always wondered if that was deliberate…wait; where was I? Right. His BG series “The Gallimaufry” is chock-full of interesting words. Some of them character names, e.g. Security Chief Parahexavoctal. He mentioned the book as one of his primary sources for such things. He also declined to define parahexavoctal, the tease, saying we’d have to look it up.

It’s not in the book. Aaaaaargh! I shall send a note to Phil forthwith.

Still, it’s well worth the $12.95 I paid for it. I read Paul the better entries during television commercials and such. A steal! I should note that it’s not so ‘like-new’ as the seller and I (well, as I) thought it was. I found a single pencil mark in it. Somebody circled the final word in this entry:

amarity (a-mar’i-te”) n. biterness.

[sic]. Shocking, really. Surely this sort of thing doesn’t happen in more reputable dictionaries. It also occurs to me that they don’t say whether amarity is a quality of flavor or an emotional state. Maybe both. Why not?

Anyway. Can anybody define “parahexavoctal” for me? You there—have a go at it. Go on. What do you think it means?

Commentary

It sounds vaguely like a IUPAC chemical name.

posted by zwit, Nov 13 04 7:23 PM

In the end, I learned that it doesn’t mean anything. I had confused ‘parahexavoctal’ with ‘thezmothete,’ the word he’d mentioned as coming from the Dictionary.

Oh well. The search was fun while it lasted.

posted by Andrew, Nov 14 04 10:48 AM

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