T

TABESCENT :  adj  wasting away. Compare ANORECTIC, CACHECTIC, DYSCRASE, INANITION, MARASMIC, MARCESCENCE

The explorer lies there, racked with fever, riddled with worms, his stomach shrunken, sphincter wide open, barely able to raise his eyes. He is weakened and stinking, tabescent, at the far edge of hope.

--Boyle, Water Music, p. 42.

TANNHAUSERISM :  noun  a psychological state resembling that of Tannhauser, a thirteenth-century German poet. A sixteenth-century ballad tells the story of his descent into a cave, his affair with Venus in Venusberg, his attempt to reconcile himself with the church, and his final return to the depths. His story is also told in an opera by Wagner. See also quotation. Compare BATHYSIDERODROMOPHOBIA, CHTHONIC, TERRENITY

There is that not-so-rare personality disorder known as Tannhauserism. Some of us love to be taken under mountains . . . the comfort of a closed place, where everyone is in complete agreement about death.

--Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, p. 299.

TERRAQUEOUS :  adj  having to do with both land and water, amphibious. See CONSUETUDE

TERRENITY :  noun  the state of belonging to the earth. See also quotation. Compare BATHYSIDERODROMOPHOBIA, CHTHONIC, TANNHAUSERISM

Trees creak in sorrow for the engineered wound through their terrain, their terrenity or earthhood.

--Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, p. 733.

THOOID :  adj  having to do with wolves, jackals, and/or hyenas. Compare LUPINE

Because of their skins, their wild beards, their thooid and mangy rawhide lacings . . . they seemed to be fit heirs for their peculiar forebears.

--Helprin, Winter's Tale, p. 625.

THOS :  noun  a dog-like beast of prey, usually a jackal. See PATIBULARY

TIRADE : noun  See quotation

Funny what will stick in your mind. Know what I remember most about Racine? Your explanation about a Tirade. You know--Teerahd. These are long speeches every principal character gets at some point, to wrap up a whole lot of exposition about the story thus far and also give the audience a long hard look at him on his own. It doesn't mean a chewing out.

--DeVries, Into Your Tent I'll Creep, p. 27.

TIRRIT : noun  a tantrum, a fit. Compare ABREACTION, BATRACHOMYOMACHIA, FRATCH, QUISQUOUS

It was a night full of `tirrits and frights´ (Nell's own words), Poins being scared out of his wits by the sight of her bird's nest. . . .

--Nye, Falstaff, pp. 254-255.

TITUBATION : noun  See quotation

. . . I was failing to live up to potential in the moral sphere as well as the scholastic. "That is my titubation," I said
". . . What on Earth is that?"
"A halting, or stumbling in my progress toward what I should be."

--DeVries, Slouching Towards Kalamazoo, p. 62.

TONTINE :  adj or noun  referring to any arrangement similar to one originally invented by Lorenzo Tonti in sixteenth-centur France, whereby surviving subscribers received increased benefits as other subscribers died. Now, usually refers to the survivor taking all.

What holds them back is what comes next. The free-for-all, that winner-take-all frenzy of their terrible tontine arrangements. . . .They are sizing each other up. . . .

--Elkin, George Mills, p. 62.

TORPID :  adj  numb, paralyzed; also, "compare Spanish--torpe, which can also mean clumsy" (Koster)

His supporters were fat and torpid from three yards gobbling at the public trough.

--Koster, The Prince, pp. 161-162.

TORTICOLLIS :  noun  a more or less permanently twisted neck

I kiss him and his smile starts his head turning away in a long trembling torticollis.

--Percy, The Moviegoer, p. 137.

TORTUOSITY :  noun  the condition of being twisted, bent, sinuous, crooked

I have practiced the craft of fiction for many years, but I know less than I ever knew about the tortuosities of the human soul.

--Burgess, Earthly Powers, p. 145.

TOTTY :  noun  a higher-class prostitute. See FUBSY

TOXOPHILITE :  noun and adj  an aficionado of archery, a bow-and-arrow buff; relating to one who has this avocation

Now A.G.A. was a toxophilite humanist, well able, as Shakespeare says, to clap in the clout at twelve score, and carry a forehand shaft a fourteen and a fourteen and a half.

--Nye, "The Story of Sdeath and Northangerland,"
Tales I Told My Mother, p. 30.

TRAMONTANA :  adj  from Italian for "over the mountains"; the north wind; something northern. TRAMONTANE, adj

. . . it seemed more reasonable or seasonable to regard all this as some mere transitory tramontana, some boreal† thrust, yet it was most unfortunate for the poor dear roses.

--Burgess, Napoleon Symphony, p. 347.

TRANSANIMATING :  adj  transferring a soul from one body to another

Then blow me if she didn't startle the half-light with a transanimating smile.

--Foxell, Carnival, p. 61.

TRANSHUMANCE :  noun  the movement of animals and/or people according to the season, as from summer pasture to winter

. . . pausing and using her hands like some practiced lecturer, say Jacob Bronowski warming to the subject of transhumance, although without his semi-conspiratorial whisper, his oracular sigh.

--West, Gala, p. 132.

TRANMOGRIFY :  verb  to change grotesquely and/or humorously

Third N. [Nut] or K. [Keeper]: Transmogrify common air into diamonds through Cataclysmic Carbon Dioxide Reducti-o-o-o-o-n-n-n. . . .

--Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, p. 260.

TRANSSECTITE :  noun  See quotation

. . . a transsectite, a Lutheran named Mausmacher who liked to dress up in Roman regalia.

--Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, p. 653.

TRASCINE :  verb  to rough up or to make rough. TRASCINED, adj

"I've always believed in free will," she said.
"And yet I seem, more than anyone I've ever known or heard of, to have been--well, drawn, tugged, trascined. Predestination."

--Burgess, The End of the World News, p. 368.

TRIBADISM :  noun  from Greek for "to rub"; Lesbianism. Compare EUTRIPSIA, FRICATIVE, FROTTAGE

Over in Tiryns I saw her bitter bullish like, Anteia, forcing docile girls into tribadism while Megapenthes plotted coup d' état and double theta'd sodomocracy.

--Barth, Chimera, p. 302.

TRIPHTHONG :  noun  three vowels in one syllable

A hot thundery wind launched itself at them, spent itself, and somewhere a bell beat out wild triphthongs.

--Lowry, Under the Volcano, p. 280.

TROGLE :  noun  a bunch of snakes

. . . blue-scaled snakes rolled coil on coil, their hatchet heads hovering, floating, the whole dark trogle alive with rattling and hissing. . . .

--Gardner, Jason and Medeia, p. 153.

TUCKET :  noun  a musical fluorish, a trumpet call for cavalry

. . . you've smiled at bears who pompously, foolishly lord it over lesser bears but shake like mice at the tucket and boom of heaven. . . .

--Gardner, Jason and Medeia, p. 59.

TURBO :  noun  Greek for "a top"; something that spins See PATIBULARY

Was I to spin forever, a turbo from which God himself had whipped the cord?

--Davenport, "C. Musonius Rufus,"
Da Vinci's Bicycle, p. 11.

TURONIAN :  adj  a subdivision of the (geologic) cretaceous† period. See PATIBULARY

TURPID :  adj  vile, foul, nasty

I was despicable and brutal and turpid. . . .

--Nabokov, Lolita, p. 286.