#a robert macfarlane glossary
Text
Afternoon moonrise. Long light. Low sun. Slow dusk. Shingal hush from distal to Ness.
1 note
·
View note
Text
Eight years ago, in the coastal township of Shawbost on the Outer Hebridean island of Lewis, I was given an extraordinary document. It was entitled ‘Some Lewis Moorland Terms: A Peat Glossary’, and it listed Gaelic words and phrases for aspects of the tawny moorland that fills Lewis’s interior. Reading the glossary, I was amazed by the compressive elegance of its lexis, and its capacity for fine discrimination: a caochan, for instance, is ‘a slender moor-stream obscured by vegetation such that it is virtually hidden from sight’, while a feadan is ‘a small stream running from a moorland loch’, and a fèith is ‘a fine vein-like watercourse running through peat, often dry in the summer’. Other terms were striking for their visual poetry: rionnach maoim means ‘the shadows cast on the moorland by clouds moving across the sky on a bright and windy day’; èit refers to ‘the practice of placing quartz stones in streams so that they sparkle in moonlight and thereby attract salmon to them in the late summer and autumn’, and teine biorach is ‘the flame or will-o’-the-wisp that runs on top of heather when the moor burns during the summer’.
Robert Macfarlane, Landmarks, 2015
#robert macfarlane#lit#all forms of landscape are autobiographical#i will wait for the birches to move; the wood to come up past the cairn until it has veiled the mountain
13 notes
·
View notes
Quote
For all of these writers, to use language well is to use it particularly: precision of utterance as both a form of lyricism and a species of attention. “I want my writing to bring people not just to think of ‘trees’ as they mostly do now,” wrote Deakin in a notebook, “but of each individual tree, and each kind of tree”. Muir, spending his first summer working as a shepherd among the pines of the Sierra Nevada in California, reflected in his journal that “Every tree calls for special admiration. I have been making many sketches and regret that I cannot draw every needle.”
Strange events occurred in the course of the years and journeys I spent writing Landmarks – convergences that pressed at the limits of coincidence, and tended to the eerie. They included the discovery of a “tunnel of swords and axes” in Cumbria, guided by a Finnish folk tale; an encounter with a peregrine in south Cambridge on the day I went to look through Baker’s telescopes and binoculars; the experience of walking into the pages of Shepherd’s The Living Mountain in the Cairngorms; and the widening ripples of a forgotten place word, found in a folder in Suffolk, left behind by a man who had died. Strangest of all these strangenesses, though, was the revelation in the week I finished the book, that its originating dream of a glossary of landscape-language so vast it might encompass the world had, almost, come true.
robert macfarlane, the word hoard
35 notes
·
View notes
Text
Oh My Words II
The NQDA compendium of wacky words is back. First up, because...
I’ve just read Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks - a beautiful piece of non-fiction in which Macfarlane addresses our diminishing knowledge of vocabulary pertaining to the natural world. One particularly hard-hitting demonstration of this, he examples, is that in the 2007 edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary, a whole host of words the like of acorn, bluebell, conker, dandelion, fern, ivy, kingfisher, nectar and willow, were removed in favour of terms such as block-graph, bullet-point, chatroom, cut-and-paste, MP3 player and voice-mail. Shocker!
The book is dotted with glossaries, collected and compiled by Macfarlane over the years, which describe particular aspects of the landscape, weather etc. Words to illustrate minute details of natural phenomena; things that I’m guilty of having claimed not to have the words to describe. Masses of them appealed to me - I really recommend getting stuck into Landmarks yourself - but here are a few of my faves:
hussy (p226) - to rub the hands when they are cold
alpenglow (p83) - light of the setting or rising sun seen illuminating high mountains or the underside of clouds
dimpling (p230) - rippling motion induced in a bird’s wing feathers by the passage of wind
doom fire (p223) - sunset-light which has the appearance of apocalypse to it
clock-ice (p88) - ice cracked and crazed by fissures, usually brought about by the pressure of walkers or skaters
nuddle (p206) - to walk in a dreamy manner, with head down, as if preoccupied
clagarnach (p127) - clatter; noise of heavy rain on an iron roof
screener (p374) - a howling gale
benighted (p223) - overtaken by darkness while walking or climbing
bleach (p126) - of rain and snow: to lash, blow in your face
burr (p223) - mistiness over and around the moon, a moon-halo
The second batch mainly consists of foreign words I’ve encountered, for which we do not have an exact equivalent, but could really rather use one. The things we rely upon mini sentences to describe, that may be expressed with a single word or concise phrase in other languages. If only English granted us the likes of...
shemomedjamo - Georgian: “I accidentally just ate the whole thing”
concolon - Ecuadorian: so supper’s finished, the dish is empty.... but no, no it’s not QUITE empty. The gold dust that’s stuck to the bottom of the pan, around the edges is still there yes it is. And it is mine. Concolon = Amy’s scrapings.
Backpfeifengesicht - German: a face that could do with becoming better acquainted with a fist. Result to benefit all parties involved.
cavoli riscaldati - Italian: the Italians succinctly equate futile attempts to rekindle a doomed relationship to reheating cabbage
akihi - Hawaiian: (This is ALWAYS ME...) When you ask somebody for directions, and forget them as soon as they tell you (...and it’s never okay to reissue the request, dammit).
shitta - Farsi: breakfast consisting of leftovers from the night before. Love me a bit of shitta for brekkie. Heh. Heh. Heh.
firgun - Hebrew: when you genuinely delight in another person’s success. Genuinely. Envy nil.
l’esprit de l’escalier - French: when you think of a winning comeback, but the moment’s well and truly over... We have kind of latched onto this, translating it into English as “staircase wit”.
zeg - Georgian: so many languages have a word for this one (‘lendemain’ in French, ‘übermorgen’ in German, ‘dopodomani’ in Italian), but Georgia’s is the most pleasingly concise. The day after tomorrow. How do we not have a better way of saying that?!
pisan zapra - Malay: the time required to eat a banana. JOKES. No really, not jokes. It’s for realz a thing.
mencolek - Indonesian: the tap and run. When you sneak up on somebody, tap their shoulder and then deny everything.
neidbau - German: something constructed specifically to rub your neighbours up the wrong way
age-otori - Japanese: “Whoooop. Getting a fresh ’do.” (Enter hair salon. Time passes...) “Shit my hair DEF looked better before.”
mamihlapinatapei - Yagan: heralded the world’s most succinct word by The Guinness Book of World Records. When two people share a look as if to say “you first, no you first, no YOU first, NO YOU...”
C’mon English, do better. (Love you rly.)
SuSo: “Not Enough Words” by Action Bronson x Statik Selektah / https://open.spotify.com/track/1u3hwQVMWxZUVR56sZg1Sk?si=GVI_pHS5TGyymlmwI-TrYw
References:
Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane (2016, Penguin Books)
https://stephenliddell.co.uk/2013/08/28/102-great-words-that-arent-in-english-but-should-be/
http://www.wisegeek.org/10-hilariously-insightful-foreign-words-7
http://mentalfloss.com/article/28915/14-more-wonderful-words-no-english-equivalent
http://www.cracked.com/article_17251_the-10-coolest-foreign-words-english-language-needs.html
https://www.lonelyplanet.com/travel-tips-and-articles/words-that-dont-but-should-exist-in-english/40625c8c-8a11-5710-a052-1479d277c358
#words#define#definitions#dictionary#robert macfarlane#landmarks#foreign languages#translate#idioms#vocabulary#action bronson#read
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
Academic Research Article Examples [Key word searches - google scholar, databases or library search]
Films/Cinema (the ninth art of human culture; moving images, over space and time)
1. Akira (1988) Dir. Katsuhiro Otomo. Toho Company, 1988 film.
Baishya, Anirban Kapil. “Trauma, Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction & the Post-Human.” Wide Screen. 3.1. (2011): 1-25 Print.
See Works Cited list provided at end of article—Rebuilding Neo-Tokyo: The search for normality in apocalypse of Akira
Keywords: futurism, cyberpunk, anime, postmodernism, Japanese aesthetics, dystopia, manga fiction, apocalypse, specter of nuclear war
2. The Old Ways: A Journey On Foot by Robert Macfarlane
Alexander, Neal. “Theologies of the Wild,” Journals of Modern Literature, Vol. 38, No. 4: 1-19
Blake, Kevin S. “Mountain Symbolism and Geographical Imagination,” Cultural Geographies, October 2005: 527 - 531
Bose, Sudip. “The World All Before Them: Setting Off on Footpaths Both Well-Trod and Forgotten.” American Scholar, 00030937, Spring 2013, Vol. 82, Issue 2: 16 -17
Federman, Adam. “Unseen Landscapes.” Earth Island Journal, September 2012: 54 - 55.
Henderson, Caspar. “Imagining the World.” Chronicle of Higher Education, 00095982, 4/26/2013, Vol. 59, Issue 33: http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid+8&sid+8d9f4d51-486c-4340-be12-3042144a08f4%40pdc-v-sessmgr01&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbG12ZQ%3d%3d#AN=8728513&db+asn
Macfarlane, Robert, and Giles Watson. “An Anthropocene Glossary.” New Scientist. 2/6/2016, Vol. 229 Issue 3059, p43-p43
Scovell, Adam. “The Big Interview: Robert Macfarlane,” The Double Negative, 2016.
0 notes
Photo
Happy to contribute to the project Place Language
Place Language is an international non-profit compilation album project inspired by the themes found in Robert Macfarlane’s widely-acclaimed book ‘Landmarks’. In particular it focuses on the book’s extensive topographic glossaries, the “word-hoard” of depictive landscape terms gathered from 30 different languages, dialects and sub-dialects around Britain & Ireland and divided into sections by type of terrain (Flatlands, Uplands, Waterlands, Coastlands, Underlands, Northlands, Edgelands, Earthlands and Woodlands).Relying on these topograms, or “tiny place poems”, as creative prompts, Place Language seeks to both inspire a renewed interest in our surroundings and reinvigorate our appreciation for the audible textures & patterns that characterize a place in keeping with the book’s stated desire to “re-wild” our vocabulary.
More info here: https://facture.bandcamp.com/album/place-language
0 notes
Photo
These two dudes are due back at the library: Landmarks by Robert MacFarlane, and Payback by Margaret Atwood. In the latter, Chapter 3 Debt As Plot was particularly interesting, "debt is a mental or spiritual non-place", a hell carried around "like a private climate", and millers, weavers, and tailors being considered thieves due to their value-added being hard to quantify ... also the screw Heathcliff twists is debt. The former containing 9 glossaries of terms describing nature from Gaelic, Scots, Shetland, Devon, Cornwall, Welsh, Irish, Manx, Exmoor, East Anglia, Anglo-Romani, Galloway, Fenland, Cumbria etc dialects. (at Salamander Bay, New South Wales) https://www.instagram.com/p/B0kkzvBgZ6-/?igshid=1g1x7f0xk8g2p
0 notes
Text
“The same year I first saw the Peat Glossary, a new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary was published. A sharp-eyed reader noticed that there had been a culling of words concerning nature. Under pressure, Oxford University Press revealed a list of the entries it no longer felt to be relevant to a modern-day childhood. The deletions included acorn, adder, ash, beech, bluebell, buttercup, catkin, conker, cowslip, cygnet, dandelion, fern, hazel, heather, heron, ivy, kingfisher, lark, mistletoe, nectar, newt, otter, pasture and willow. The words introduced to the new edition included attachment, block-graph, blog, broadband, bullet-point, celebrity, chatroom, committee, cut-and-paste, MP3 player and voice-mail.”
- Landmarks, Robert Macfarlane
0 notes
Quote
The same year I first saw the Peat Glossary, a new edition of the
Oxford Junior Dictionary was published. A sharp-eyed reader noticed
that there had been a culling of words concerning nature. Under pressure, Oxford University Press revealed a list of the entries it no longer felt to be relevant to a modern-day childhood. The deletions included acorn, adder, ash, beech, bluebell, buttercup, catkin, conker, cowslip, cygnet, dandelion, fern, hazel, heather, heron, ivy, kingfisher, lark, mistletoe, nectar, newt, otter, pasture and willow. The words introduced to the new edition included attachment, block-graph, blog, broadband, bullet-point, celebrity, chatroom, committee, cut-and-paste, MP3 player and voice-mail.
When Vineeta Gupta, then head of children’s dictionaries at
OUP, was asked why the decision had been taken to delete those
‘nature words’, she explained that the dictionary needed to reflect
the consensus experience of modern-day childhood.
Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane (p.3)
1 note
·
View note
Text
Drifts favourite holiday destination is two tiny cove beaches on the English south coast, one of which gathers right-handed gloves in its jetsam and the other which gathers left handed gloves.
0 notes
Text
Perhaps he makes me uneasy because I know he's my soulmate.
0 notes
Text
in the London Library
Alphabetisation is your friend.
it is the friend who, sensing you tire of Timothy Morton and are plagued still by a short story set in Hinchingbrook Park, recommends you go in search of your last successful local introduction -- Victor Serge, alongside of whom sits: Gemma Seltzer (to finally tell the ventriloquist dummy story you have been waiting for ever since that ride home from Deptford) and Ponsonberry Senior (if you recall correctly) whose "Diary of Mrs. Pepys" certainly relieves you of the burden of some sort of serialized Samuel, for it (the fictionalised diary of Elizabeth Pepys, a wondrous character) is the best enjoyment you will receive as a legacy of that annual celebration of 'his' stone-day. And atop the Diary sits "She Married Pushkin," so you take her out for a smoke, since she (not the titular she, but the long-lost Goncharoff she plagued by the need to finish her own serialised life of the long gone) reckons Natalia should have as much of a say as Elizabeth. And though Natalia had the more glamorous oaf, Elizabeth gets all the good lines.
You don't know all that immediately but you will, once you cast off Seltzer and Serge and, waylaid by "Ness", which grabbed you just as you were leaving and, truth be told, does sweep you off your feet for the rest of the dance because for a 40 minutes you really don't need anything else but McFarlane on Orford (not Loch).
But Elizabeth Pepys and Natalia Pushkina have been great mates over this 'arctic' (let's face it, it doesnt mean what it used to mean) December.
As kindred spirits as alphabetisation itself.
0 notes
Text
The Carso
"We have cave systems with living glaciers in them ... here, the earth itself is tidal. Truly! The rock here reacts to the draw of the moon, just as the water of the ocean does. Gravitational attraction pulls and then releases the limestone up to two centimetres. Nevertheless, here the world surges and relaxes beneath your feet without your feeling it.
0 notes
Text
sarha
(Arabic) a walk or wander that leads to some kind of revelation or spritual renovation.
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
moraine
A mound or ridge consisting of debris that has been carried and deposited by a glacier or ice sheet, usually at its side or extremity.
1 note
·
View note
Text
wether
Boulders of sandstone that lie on top of chalk (see also, sarsen.)
0 notes
Last Seen Blogs
linosspam
linosspam
the-bootleg-artist
Send Help
generoustechnologydiyoperator
Untitled
eat-live-repeat
Eat.Live.Repeat
