H

HAPTERIC :  adj  fastening, usually in reference to the hold-fast which ancors seaweed to the ocean floor

. . . she was attempting to dislodge her husband from the shoal of furniture where his hapteric glass anchored him.

--Gaddis, The Recognitions, p. 628.

HAPTIC :  adj  having to do with touching, tactile. Compare CONTRECTATION, DACTYLIC, EUTRIPSIA

She . . . let loose . . . a not-uncommon antagonism, syncopated with hot flashes: party bigotry, part haptic bias.

--Theroux, Three Wogs, p. 15.

HASTATE :  adj  shaped like a spearhead or arrowhead. Compare GLOCKAMOID

. . . the pod of Bruno's broekje humped to a pommel which Katje with a blind hand freed from its strain hastate and nodular.

--Davenport, "The Dawn in Erewhon,"
Tatlin!, p. 199.

HERMETIC :  adj  from Hermes Trismegistus or Thoth: 1) mysterious, occult; 2) sealed airtight

She was not going to make any explanations, and something about her hermetic expression made it, yet once again, infuriatingly, seem vulgar to be curious.

--Fowles, The Magus, p. 630.

"Calm yourselves, gentlemen. And be humble." Purcell spoke with the hermetic theatricality of John Paul Ziller. "You are in the presence of Mon Cul, prince of baboons."

--Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction, p. 32.

HESYCHASTIC :  adj  keeping quiet, maintaining silence

. . . long hesychastic vigils. . . .

--Theroux, Darconville's Cat, p. 460.

HOLUS-BOLUS :  adv  literally, "whole lump"; in one gulp. See DIGLOT. Compare BOLUS

HORTATIVE :  adj  encouraging, urging, cheering on. Compare PROTREPTIC

Chiefy, at the other end of the mess, was yelling in a hortative frenzy at two oilers who shovelled seawater with dustpans toward the open end of a buzzing, sucking portable pump.

--C. Buckley, Steaming to Bamboola, p. 51.

HURDIES :  noun  the buttocks. Compare NATES, PRAT

. . . he with his dancing light behind her hurdies and calves and mobile shoulders ad streaming hair. . . .

--Nabokov, Ada, p. 209.

HYALESCENCE :  noun  glassiness. HYALINE, adj Compare NATES, PRAT

. . . the murky, cold hyalescence of a dried up aquarium.

--Aczel, Illuminations, p. 214.

. . . the cold waves, green hyaline swells. . . .

--Davenport, "The Dawn in Erewhon," Tatlin!, p. 244.

HYDROPHILIA :  noun  the love of water

Time was when she'd spend half of every day in the bath, tootling and warbling in rapt hydrophilia, the water ice cold.

--West, Gala, p. 43.

HYPERTROPHIA :  noun  excessive growth or complexity. Compare ACROMEGALIC, APOTROPAIC

There were several levels of noise, people in shifting groups, rotary units turning, a sense of hypertrophia, something growing outward toward a limit.

--Lloyd-Jones, Lord of the Dance, p. 56.