Felicia Davin

fantasy romance

Shall we sing a song?

SHALL, v. This word has been on my mind because my kid adopted it. A couple days ago, he asked for more strawberries and when I told him the box was empty, he said, “Shall we go to the store?” like the world’s most prescriptively correct almost-two-year-old. He says

English literature

Every beating heart a secret

SONDER, n. This is a new word (we could say “neologism,” sure), coined by the writer John Koenig in 2012 for his project The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. He invented it based on French “sonder” (to probe, to measure the depths of), and German “sonder-,” a prefix that indicates something

Jorge Luis Borges

God's secret dictionary

JACTITATION, n., also jactation. I’ve been reading the work of Argentine genius Jorge Luis Borges again. In one translation (Douglas Crockford’s), I ran across this word, “jactitation,” for Spanish “jactancia,” which I think is more usually translated as “boasting.” “Jactitation” has the same meaning in English, but it’

French history

Octidi 18 Nivôse

CALENDAR, n. Timely, right? I looked this word up for reasons that will become clear below, but I figured the first newsletter of January was a great moment to tell you about it. We get “calendar,” meaning the way we organize our months and years (as in “the Gregorian calendar”

fantasy romance

Apparitions

ANDROID, n. There are androids in one of this week’s small-r romances. This newsletter has covered “robot” and “construct” before, so I figured it was time to look up “android,” even though it’s pretty etymologically straightforward. Andro- as in “man,” -oid as in “having the form or nature

French literature

Roosters, horses, ginger, figs

COCKTAIL, n. I was at a bar with some friends and one of them said, “Where does the word ‘cocktail’ come from? No, don’t look it up—it can’t possibly be as good as what I’m imagining.” Telling me not to look up a word has never

historical romance

Undercrofts

UNDERCROFT, n. Two of the romance novels that I wrote about below prominently feature an undercroft, that is to say, the cavernous space under a castle, filled with stone columns. So naturally I had to look it up. Undercrofts tend to be a feature of Norman architecture, so we’re

contemporary romance

Myschyvys

MISCHIEVOUS, adj. Now that I’ve put this word in the title of a novel that will be published on Tuesday, I have to come clean: I can’t ever type it right on the first try and I was pronouncing it wrong (sorry, as good descriptivists, we say “in

poetry

people no less beautiful than you are

DEHISCENCE, n. This is a word for a ripe pod or fruit—or wound—splitting open. I had to look it up because it’s in one of the poems below. Etymologically, it’s a straight line back to Latin dehiscentia, which also means splitting open. From there, you can

contemporary romance

a word to the poem

LEOPARD, n. This is the common name in English for Panthera pardus, a spotted, golden-furred big cat that lives in various habitats across Africa and Asia. The etymology of “leopard” is fairly straightforward: most likely, it’s “leo” for lion and “pard” from pardos, meaning “spotted.” “Like a lion, but

contemporary romance

Leveling

STRIKE, n. There’s a lot of news in the US about striking labor unions right now, so naturally I’ve been wondering why our word for “the cessation of labor in order to force bosses to respect workers” is “strike.” Strike, as a verb and a noun, has a

food words

Snits

Hello, Word Suitcase readers! This newsletter normally arrives in your inbox on Sunday, which today is not. In theory it also comes every two weeks. I meant to send this last weekend, but our household was struck by back-to-back illnesses, the second of which was covid. We’re recovering, but

expressions

Following nature

SECOND NATURE, expr. I was listening to a song of this title recently and it occurred to me that I didn’t really know what this phrase meant. Sure, sure, something that “is/comes as/feels like second nature” is instinctive or effortless, but shouldn’t that be first nature?

animal words

Gerfaunts and orafles

GIRAFFE, n. This word, referring to the long-necked, spotted African mammal, comes to English through French, where it used to be spelled “giraffe” but is now spelled “girafe,” and in either case its origin is Arabic zarāfa. Before English settled on “giraffe,” we used to call these animals camelopards, gerfaunts,

animal words

Coneys

RABBIT, n. My baby learned to say this word. Actually, he learned to say “babbit,” which is even better. Did you know that children simplify words they can’t pronounce in consistent, predictable ways? As in, not all kids employ the same rules, but each individual kid settles on their

A long long way to run

GAMUT, n. In my notes on the romance novels below, “gamut” came up. It turned out to be really fun. I think of it as meaning a “range” and only use it in the expression “to run the gamut,” i.e. to cover the whole range, but when I wrote

animal words

If the sky falls, we shall catch larks

LARK, n. I went chasing after this word because I was trying to decide if one of my fictional characters could say they were doing something as “a lark.” And then I thought, wait, how old is that expression? Why is doing something purely for amusement, or on a whim,

Moby-Dick

fact one: the whale is a discourse

DISCOURSE, n. I can’t quit twitter. It’s owned by a fascist ghoul and increasingly more broken every day, but my bookish community still lives there, it’s a reliable way to get the word out about a new book, sometimes passionate fans will coalesce around a single tweet

Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep

PEEKABOO, interj, n. This week when I picked up my baby from daycare, one of the teachers said, “He plays a mean peekaboo.” I had to agree. This game is one of the cutest behaviors babies learn in their first year, once they figure out that things still exist even

Tied up and stressed out

FRAPED, adj. This isn’t the first time one of KJ Charles’s novels has used a word that inspired me to write a newsletter. Charles’s latest romance novel is The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen (m/m, both cis and gay, historical) and it takes place on the

French literature

Sakes alive!

SAKE, n. This noun no longer exists on its own in English. We gotta say “for God’s sake” or “for fuck’s sake” or “for the sake of [whatever].” I was gonna try to come up with a counter example, “sake” on its own, to explain what we can’

French literature

Gender outlaws

COPE, v. A reader recently asked me about the use of “cope”and “full of matter” in these lines of Shakespeare’s As You Like It, at the end of Act II, scene 1: DUKE SENIOR And did you leave him in this contemplation? SECOND LORD We did, my lord,

Laid out

I recently discovered a mistake in my newsletter service that meant a lot of you were not receiving these emails. If this is the first one you’ve seen in months, or ever, I’m so sorry! It’s fixed now. Old newsletters are archived on my site. EXPLICIT, adj.

Unfinished business

FAMILECT, n. This is a linguistics term for language used and understood only within a family or intimate group. Linguistics has a bunch of these words, like “sociolect” (language used and understood within a social group) and even “idiolect” (language used and understood by an individual). Familects, in particular, tend

body or sex words

Legally obscene

This week’s Word Suitcase is sexually explicit. Or perhaps I should say “more sexually explicit than usual.” CUNT, n. It was inevitable that I’d write about this word eventually, I think. This time last year, I was writing about “pudendum” and “the obscenest picture the world possesses,” so