P

PAEAN, PAEN :  noun  a song or shout of praise

. . . I suppose he and Mistress Stander whispered paeans to the absent monarch between couplings.

--Cameron, Our Jo, p. 9.

PALMERIN :  noun  a chivalric hero of sixteenth-century Spanish romances. See PATIBULARY

PALUSTRAL :  adj  swampy, marshy

Here Ford and Hemingway corrected the palustral proofs of The Making of Americans.

--Davenport, "Au Tombeau de Charles Fourier,"
Da Vinci's Bicycle, p. 98.

PAPYROMANCY :  noun  See quotation

. . . Säure really turns out to be an adept at the difficult art of papyromancy, the ability to prophesy through contemplating the way people roll reefers.

--Helprin, Winter's Tale, p. 203.

PARACHRONIC :  adj  anachronistic, out of correct historical time. See also FINNEGANSWAKE. Compare EXOLETE, PRETERIST

Paul squinted at his wrist-watch, his only stitch of clothing (no matter how intense and parachronic the abandon, he never took it off.) . . .

--Burgess, Honey for the Bears, p. 25.

PATIBULARY :  adj  "delicate in motion, graceful and muffled as in the quiet sound made by ballet slippers. Only to be used in winter and at night" (Helprin)

Mrs. Gamely's vocabulary was enormous. She knew words no one had ever heard of, and she used words every day that had been mainly dead or sleeping for hundreds of years. Virginia checked them in Oxford dictionary, and found that (almost without exception) Mrs' Gamely's usage was flawlessly accurate. For instance, she spoke of certain kinds of dogs as Leviners.† She called the areas near Quebec march-lands. She referred to diclesiums,† liripoops,† rapparees,† dagswains,† bronstrop,† caroteel,† opuntias,† and soughs. She might describe something as patibulary, fremescent,†, phariasic, Roxburghe,† or glockamoid,† and words like mormal,† jeropigia,† endosmic,† mage, palmerin,† thos,† vituline,† Turonian,† galingale,† secotine,† ogdoad,† and pintulary† fled from her lips in Pierian† saltarellos.†

--Helprin, Winter's Tale, p. 203.

PELLICULE :  noun  literally, "small skin"; a thin membrane such as that covering the clitoris

. . . her neb† of high-spirited flesh under its pellicule, which when thrummed, wiggled, twitched, quivered, licked, bobbled, joggled, launched her into a rapture.

--Davenport, "On Some Lines of Virgil,"
Eclogues, p. 180.

PENANNULAR :  adj  almost circular, like a ring with an opening on its circumference. Compare SECOTINE

She brought it to her work-table in the penannular bow-window. . . .

--Beckett, "Draff," More Pricks than Kicks, p. 177.

PIERIAN :  adj  referring to poetry and learning; from Piera, in ancient northern Thessaly, reputed home of the muses. See PATIBULARY

PINTULARY :  adj  relating to penises, pins, or bolts. See PATIBULARY

PLUMBACEOUS :  adj  leaden, lead-colored

. . . this wan-looking though sun-colored little orphan aux yeux battus (and even those plumbaceous umbrae† under her eyes bore freckles). . . .

--Nabokov, Lolita, p. 113.

POSTHION :  noun  foreskin. POSTHIA, plural noun. See and compare AKROPOSTHION, CARDIOID, STEGOCEPHALIC

PRAT :  noun  the buttocks, the ass. Compare HURDIES, NATES

. . . those parched and juiceless prats with supercalendered† skin. . . .

--Theroux, Darconville's Cat, p. 344.

PRETERIST :  noun  one who is overly fond of the past. See also quotation. Compare EXOLETE, PARACHRONIC

A preterist: one who collects cold nests.

--Nabokov, Pale Fire, p. 35.

PRETERITE :  adj  relating to those who have been "passed over" and who therefore are not among the Elect of God. PRETERITION, noun

. . . the preterite, the titless, and knee-dimpled Annette leading the other Mouseketeers into inquiring of the viewers their familiar and rhetorical Why?

--Exley, Pages from a Cold Island, p. 35.

He wrote a long tract about it presently, called On Preterition. It had to be published in England, and is among the first books to've been not only banned but also ceremonially burned in Boston. Nobody wanted to hear about all the Preterite, the many God passes over when he chooses a few for salvation.

--Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, p. 555.

PROCUMBENT :  adj  lying face down, prostrate, prone. See also EXOLETE

. . . the procumbent Bel, collapsed cream dress, two pink-soled feet . . . let's face it, one fancied her, one didn't know why but always had.

--Fowles, "The Cloud,"
The Ebony Tower, p. 296.

PROTREPTICOS :  noun  Greek for "admonishing"; persuasive instructions. Compare HORTATIVE

. . . a clattering windmill of cheerings up, pep tonics, across-the-fence chat, and general protrepticos. . . .

--Theroux, Darconville's Cat, p. 32.

PUDENCY, PUDEUR, PUDICITY :  noun  embarrassment, shame, shyness, modesty. PUDIBUND, adj. See also DELPHINET

That mannered pose, a godess's modest quail of pudency, was quite uncalled-for.

--Cozzens, By Love Possessed, p. 382.

"It was spermatorrhea. Have you heard of that"?
Interest glowed faintly. "It sounds sexual," she said without pudeur.

--Burgess, Tremor of Intent, p. 111.

Consider the elephant. . . . Such is his pudicity . . . that he never covers the female as long as anyone comes into sight.

--Theroux, Three Wogs, p. 192.

During our children's kissing phase (a not particularly healthy fortnight of long messy embraces), some old pudibund screen cut them off, so to speak, from each other's raging bodies.

--Nabokov, Ada, pp. 102-103.

PUDSY :  adj  plump. Compare FUBSY, PYKNIC

Some pudsy matron whom I'd never seen before came prancing up like a centauress and I found myself in her arms, and her halo of perfume.

--Foxell, Carnival, p. 44.

PYKNIC :  adj and noun  short, broad and muscular; one who has these qualities. Compare FUBSY, PUDSY

. . . the Duce. . .the pyknic atheist, as he termed him.

--Burgess, Earthly Powers, p. 306.

At a neat little racer with a giant faired-in radial engine . . . she smiled as if recognizing a long-lost relative; something silver-beefy, something pyknic-eager, got her to caress the blebs†, the spats, and clamp in her fist the tip of the two-bladed prop.

--West, Gala, p. 146.

The boy was a pyknic, like himself, with a round face and shortish limbs and a tendency toward being overexcited and overdepressed almost simultaneously.

--Aczel, Illuminations, p. 25.