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 talks in a way that no human being on the face of the earth has ever spoken, with the possible exception of Rex Stout after he had a gin and tonic," said Michael Jaffe, executive producer of the A&E TV series, A Nero Wolfe Mystery.
Examples of unfamiliar words — or unfamiliar uses of words that some would otherwise consider familiar — are found throughout the corpus, often in the give-and-take between Wolfe and Archie.
- Myrmidon, chapter 13. While on his way to see D.A. Anderson in White Plains, Archie remarks, "And here was I ... headed for a revelation to the District Attorney that would probably result in my having the pleasure of meeting H.R. Corbett or some other flat-footed myrmidon in the anteroom of E. D. Kimball's office — and wouldn't that have been nice?"
Read more about this topic: Fer-de-Lance (novel)
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.)
“Television programming for children need not be saccharine or insipid in order to give to violence its proper balance in the scheme of things.... But as an endless diet for the sake of excitement and sensation in stories whose plots are vehicles for killing and torture and little more, it is not healthy for young children. Unfamiliar as yet with the full story of human response, they are being misled when they are offered perversion before they have fully learned what is sound.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)
“Without our being especially conscious of the transition, the word “parent” has gradually come to be used as much as a verb as a noun. Whereas we formerly thought mainly about “being a parent,” we now find ourselves talking about learning how “to parent.” . . . It suggests that we may now be concentrating on action rather than status, on what we do rather than what or who we are.”
—Bettye M. Caldwell (20th century)