fantasy romance - Felicia Davin

food words

A costly dish

in which I’m perilously out of my depth re: food words (but perfectly at home re: romance novels)

$graphic showing fractions of the covers of the romance novels reviewed$

historical romance

Absolute skulduggery

sneaking around and romance novels

black and white photograph described in caption

fashion

Kamarband

a little fashion history and some romance novels

5 fragments of the covers of the books reviewed

writing process

Calques and loanwords

calques, loanwords, and romance novels

French history

And yet they were surprisingly moderate

The Black Jacobins, revolution, romance, and horror

animal words

Big-eared rabbit-eared

a small Australian marsupial, language names, and romance novels

contemporary romance

Shedding some light

TORCH, n., FLASHLIGHT, n. I recently had to look up, for novel research, when handheld battery-powered lights were invented (1899). Wikipedia revealed why US and Canadian English speakers call these things “flashlights” while the rest of the English-speaking world calls them “(electric) torches”: Early flashlights ran on zinc–carbon batteries,

sapphic romance

and sucks in his turn

VAMPIRE, n. These fanged undead creatures show up in romance novels a lot, often as protagonists, so it’s sort of surprising that I haven’t looked up the word until now. People love to argue about vampire lore—what powers they have, what weaknesses—and I’m not sure

sapphic romance

Weaved and wove

WEAVE, v., and also WEAVE, v., but differently. Yeah, it’s confusing. Do you ever open the dictionary and find out you’ve been wrong about something your whole life? This rocked my world. I mean that positively, though I did have to stare slack-jawed at my screen for a

fantasy romance

Ask nicely

PLEASE, adv., int. I’ve been trying to teach the toddler to say “please” when he shouts “MORE BLUEBERRIES” at me, or his dad, or anyone in the general vicinity who might have access to blueberries. For a while he found it easier to say in American Sign Language, usually

contemporary romance

Downfalls and inheritances

DEMISE, n. This word showed up in one of the romance novels below (A Caribbean Heiress in Paris) in the sentence “If the duke only knew that his sons had been plotting his demise for weeks […]” In context, the duke’s sons are not plotting his death, but his downfall;

Shakespeare

Comely truth

come (yes, like that) and, of course, romance novels

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

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

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

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

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

art history

"the obscenest picture the world possesses"

PUDENDUM, n. I recently finished reading Ross King’s The Judgment of Paris, a nonfiction book about Impressionism and French history, in particular the artists Édouard Manet and Henri Meissonier. I loved it, not just because there were several etymologies mentioned, most memorably the one in this long excerpt (page

body or sex words

Let's have a bouba

BOOBS, n. This term for breasts shows up in print in US English for the first time in 1929, which means people were saying it before that. “Boobies” is older than just plain “boobs,” and it’s a variation on “bubbies,” which goes all the way back to the 1600s

body or sex words

To have the horn

HORNY, adj. I wanted to know if I could use “horny,” as in “lustful,” in my current novel draft without it being an anachronism, and I am thrilled to report that Green’s Dictionary of Slang has the first recorded instance of “horny” as “sexually eager” in 1826 in US