Showing posts with label saturnine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label saturnine. Show all posts

Sunday, March 8, 2026

WORD MAN: SOPOR

I'm reading a John D. MacDonald book called The Turquoise Lament, and lead character Travis McGee just used the word sopor. It was unfamiliar, so I looked it up. 

Sopor is an abnormally deep sleep; a stupor.

It resembles soporific (tending to induce drowsiness or sleep: "the motion of the train had a somewhat soporific effect"; sleepy or drowsy: "some medicine made her soporific.")

I'd say they go together.

McGee just used the word saturnine to describe a doctor. Similar words: gloomy, somber, melancholy, moody, dour, glum.

MacDonald has used geodetic at least three times so far. Meaning: relating to geodesy, especially as applied to land surveying.

I've seen ferroconcrete mentioned twice so far; ferro indicates iron. From the online dictionary, ferroconcrete is concrete reinforced with steel: "a ferroconcrete storage tank."

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Friday, January 31, 2025

HE SMILED


FOUND IN A NOVEL:
"Moreover," he smiled, "we may get a chance to trap the old boy himself."

I hate it when novelists have a character smiling instead of talking. He didn't smile it; he said it.

"Moreover," he said with a smile, "we may get a chance to trap the old boy himself."

This was from Louis L'Amour's novel Hondo. BTW, L'Amour wasn't the only writer to do this.

From the same novel, I found the word saturnine, which means gloomy.

Also, The charge ended, the rush was gone, the hillside was a barren and empty thing, alive with death.

It's a run-on sentence, but I love the imagery -- alive with death after a massacre.

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ENTRIES FROM THE DOG BLOG

BLOG ENTRIES FROM THE AUTO RACING JOURNAL
(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)
(the book of great NASCAR stories)