A

ABAXIAL :  adj  off the centerline, eccentric. Compare OBLIQUITY

I mime and burlesque my own nature in an abaxial attempt to get it clear. . .

--Gardner, The Wreckage of Agathlon, p. 53.

ABDITORY :  noun  a hidden or secret place

. . . what abdictories of weakness, secret guile they keep. . . .

--Gardner, Jason and Medeia, p. 12.

ABLUTE :  verb  to cleanse "but with a ceremonial ring to it, as having had performed reglamentary pre-ritual ablutions" (Koster). ABLUTED, adj. Compare LUSTRATION

. . . the black girl, having seized his hands, now led them up, like lifeless flannels or sponges, over her smooth stomach to ablute the cones of dark-tipped flesh above. . . .

--Fowles, Mantissa, pp. 33-34.

The girls led Genghis--abluted, tunicked, wanged--through the celebrants and stood him just inside the circle.

--Koster, Mandragon, pp. 218.

ABREACTION :  noun  a talking or acting out of suppressed desires or fears; a secular version of exorcism. Compare APOTROPAIC, DIABOLIFUGE

. . . the cave of an oracle: steam drifting, sibylline† cries arriving out of the darkness. . . Abreactions of the Lord of the Night.

--Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, p. 48.

ACARPOUS :  adj  sterile, fruitless

. . . the first faint shadows of . . . "my acarpous destiny". . . .

--Nabokov, Ada, p. 219.

ACEDIA :  noun  an affliction involving loss of interest in things intellectual, spiritual, and physical

"But for sloth," said Sir Gawaine, "a tendency towards acedia is his only weakness."

--Berger, Arthur Rex, p. 181.

ACROAMATICAL :  adj  literally, "divulged only to the ear in private"; esoteric, arcane, abstruse

It was something so acroamatical, so exotically tortuous a refinement, so remote from his liberal enough conception of a decently and considerately embellished . . . escalier to venerean† ecstasy, that he took immediate fright.

--Burgess, Honey for the Bears, p. 21.

ACROMEGALIC :  adj  having oversized arms and legs and/or excessive growth. Compare HYPERTROPHIA

At the moment a match flared on the far side of the room and illuminated the ruddy acromegalic features of Smirke. . . .

--Boyle, Water Music, p. 133.

ADFENESTRATE :  verb  "to sneak through a window" (Koster). Compare antonym DEFENESTRATE

Two hours before dawn members of Acción Dinámica adfenestrated themselves into the palace.

--Koster, The Prince, p. 133.

ADSCITITIOUS :  adj  supplemental, extrinsic, superfluous

". . . Good old Biff."
"It won't last. It's thoroughly adscititious soubriquet."
"I shan't give you the satisfaction of asking you what adscititious means."
"Irrelevant."

--DeVries, Slouching Towards Kalamazoo, pp. 30-31.

AFFRICATIVE :  adj  characterized by a stop, followed by a release, in music or speach

Doting love solos. . . . Arias of concupiscence. Choirs of asyncopatic, amatory, affricative, low-woodwind drone.

--Elkin, George Mills, p. 291.

AGELAST :  noun  one who never laughs

. . . a world of agelasts and executioners and cannibals who sat ready to spring.

--Theroux, Darconville's Cat, p. 478.

AGNATIC :  adj  related on the father's side. Compare antonym ENATIC

. . . for want of mothercare or some kind of agnatic pressure. . . .

--Theroux, Three Wogs, p. 58.

AGON :  noun  a public celebration consisting of competitions and games

. . . I was caught up in more than anyone knew, some grandiose ultimate agon.

--Gardner, Jason and Medeia, pp. 144, 146.

But the Spartans do not like a game in which the defeated concedes that he has lost. It seems to them to be giving up, even though there are four more agons.

--Davenport, "The Daimon of Sokrates,"
Eclogues, p. 76.

AGONAL :  noun  a tale of suffering and death or the agony of death itself

. . . [they knew] when to expect the irrumpent† flash of crazily wandering comets, could tell the agonals of stars no longer lit, old planets shogged† off course by accidents aeons old.

--Gardner, Jason and Medeia, p. 58.

AISTH :  noun  See quotation

. . . the bothersome word esthetic was nothing but a mutant of old Greek aisthetes which meant "One who perceives. . . ."
   Aisth means here to know, including a whole underworld of underprized phenomena: the peccary, dandelion, crow, why the very pancreas itself, not in some Little League order of beauts but as a helping of equal aisth.

--West, Out of My Depths, pp. 90-91.

AITHOCHROUS :  adj  reddish-brown, ruddy

. . . a boy as splendid and aithochrous as the Cnossan striplings wrestling among blue flowers on Minos' walls. . . .

--Davenport, "The Dawn in Erewhon,"
Tatlin!, p. 253.

AKROPOSTHION :  adj  a tip of the foreskin. Compare CARDIOID, POSTHION, STEGOCEPHALIC

. . . a waking randiness limbering in the sny† of his cock, the akroposthion of which he adjusted as if modestly. . . .

--Davenport, "The Dawn in Erewhon,"
Tatlin!, p. 252.

ALBESCENT :  adj  whitened, faded, bleached

. . . Athens--beautiful, albescent as an aging virgin, irrational, tyrannical, deep-dreamed as a wife inexplicably wronged.

--Gardner, The Wreckage of Agathlon, p. 60.

ALDERMANIC :  adj  literally, "like an alderman"; dignified, stately

There were flat fish, silvered, aldermanic; slim, darting fish; palindromic† fish that peered foully out of crevices. . . .

--Fowles, The Magus, p. 138.

ALEATORIC, ALEATORY :  adj  subject to the roll of a die; random. ALEATORICALLY, adv

She smiled, girlish, pretending to be flattened, but her eyes were as col, as aleatory, as the Kyklops eye of Lykourgos.

--Gardner, The Wreckage of Agathlon, p. 57.

The novelist is still a god, since he creates (and not even the most aleatory avant-garde modern novel has managed to extirpate its author completely). . . .

--Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman, p. 106.

The pianist, who seemed as drunk as his leader, was doing something atonal and aleatoric. . . .

--Burgess, Tremor of Intent, p. 83.

. . . whistle the aleatoric music of license plates. . . .

--Elkin, George Mills, p. 19.

He was mixing cocktail in big crocks, selecting the ingredients aleatorically.

--Burgess, Enderby, p. 239.

ANACLITIC :  adj  term from psychology for being excessively dependent on the mother. Compare ENATIC

I don't think I have to gloss the true anaclitic purport behind your need to humiliate a woman doctor symbolically.

--Fowles, Mantissa, p. 144.

ANORECTIC :  adj  having no appetite, usually over a long period of time; severely skinny. Compare CACHECTIC, DYSCRASE, INANITION, MARASMIC, MARCESCENCE, TABESCENT

. . . slim anorectic queans† with gamboge† complexions.

--Theroux, Three Wogs, p. 186.

APOTROPAIC :  adj  turning away evil, exorcizing. Compare ABREACTION, DIABOLIFUGE

The Duce hurriedly withdrew his left hand from his crotch. . . The apotropaic gesture against the sacerdotal evil eye.

--Burgess, Earthly Powers, p. 303.

ARTEMID:  adj  having the characteristics of Artemis, Diana the Huntress, goddess of chastity. Compare DRYAD, MAELID, NAIAD, OREAD

There were days when her body was artemid, an oread's,† the flat belly grooved and brown, butt, breasts, and hips strict and firm. . . .

--Davenport, "The Dawn in Erewhon," Tatlin!, p. 257.

ASTUNOMOLOGIST :  noun  See quotation

"It [astunomologist] comes from the Greek for policeman . . . . Policeman sounds horrible, of course. O'Grady is highly skilled in techniques of pacification."
"That sounds horrible too."

--Burgess, The End of the World News, p. 268.