The Unfamiliar Word
"Like all of us, Wolfe has his favorite words, phrases, and sayings," wrote William S. Baring-Gould. "Among the words, many are unusual and some are abstruse."
Nero Wolfe's erudite vocabulary is one of the hallmarks of the character. Examples of unfamiliar words — or unfamiliar uses of words that some would otherwise consider familiar — are found throughout the corpus. Death of a Doxy contains several examples, including the following:
- Incumbency. Chapter 7; perhaps unfamiliar in the sense that Wolfe uses it: "Mr. Cather has worked for me, on occasion, for years, and I am under an incumbency."
- Strephon. Chapter 7. "Strephon is the lover of Urania in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, wrote Rev. Frederick G. Gotwald in The Nero Wolfe Companion. "It became the conventional name for a lover in literature." Dating to 1580, the character later appears in Jonathan Swift's "Strephon and Chloe" (1731); Happy Arcadia (1872), a one-act musical play with libretto by W. S. Gilbert; and Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe (1882).
- Juridically. Chapter 13. (This word also appears in adjectival form in The League of Frightened Men and Prisoner's Base.)
- Chaldean. Chapter 16.
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Famous quotes containing the words unfamiliar word, unfamiliar and/or word:
“Avoid an unusual and unfamiliar word just as you would a reef.”
—Julius Caesar [Gaius Julius Caesar] (100–44 B.C.)
“Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and startling to a man as his own thoughts.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All you’ve got is the word of a fool dog. It’s been my experience that a bloodhound is the foolishest dog that is. I don’t remember of anybody ever keeping a bloodhound for a yard dog. They’re such dad blasted fools.”
—Laurence Stallings (1894–1968)