A Linguistic Bestiary of David Foster Wallace

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[dfwvocab]

July 21, 2012 - July 2, 2014

And so it ends, my friends.  I’m out of words.  

I haven’t read all of DFW’s published works—“Girl with Curious Hair,” “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men,” “Oblivion: Stories,” “The Pale King,” “Everything and More,” and, finally, “Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will”—but at this point, I’m not really planning to.  Nothing against those works (well, maybe “Everything and More,” but that’s from a mathematical standpoint), but, you know, life.  

And I don’t mean “life” dismissively.  I mean “life” as in moved twice, changed careers, got engaged, bought a house, etc.—that kind of life.  All this in just two years.  Oh man, so much life.  So much good life.  And through it all, I did my best to make sure a new word came out every day.  But I'm no martyr here.

This has been fun.  I’ve learned a lot, expanded my vocabulary, and, based on the responses in my inbox, helped a lot of people.  And that’s awesome.  I’m glad I could perform this service for everyone.

Nothing else to say, so let me just plant this here and say "bye."

[dfwvocab]

confiteor

Confiteor  (noun) A form of prayer confessing sins, used in the Roman Catholic Mass and some other sacraments.

Human beings came and went. An R.N. felt his forehead and yanked her hand back with a yelp. Somebody down the hall was jabbering and weeping. At one point Chandler F., the recently graduated nonstick-cookware salesman, seemed to be there in the classic resident-confiteor position, his chin on his hands on the bedside crib-railing.

Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996. p972.

[dfwvocab]

fuliginous

fuliginous  (adjective) Sooty; dusky

...and Mario, being alone and only fourteen and largely clueless about anti-stem defensive strategies outside T-stations, had had no one worldly or adult along with him there to explain to him why the request of men with outstretched hands for a simple handshake or High Five shouldn't automatically be honored and granted, and Mario had extended his clawlike hand and touched and heartily shaken Loach's own fuliginous hand, which led through a convoluted but kind of heartwarming and faith-reaffirming series of circumstances to B. Loach, even w/o an official B.A., being given an Asst. Trainer's job at E.T.A., a job he was promoted from just months later when the then-Head Trainer suffered the terrible accident that resulted in all locks being taken off E.T.A. saunas' doors and the saunas' maximum temperature being hard-wired down to no more than 50°C.

Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996. p971.

[dfwvocab]

mufti

mufti  (noun) A Muslim legal expert who is empowered to give rulings on religious matters.

Citizens found his pitch apparently just touching enough to give him $; but B. Loach's brother — who often stood there in collar less mufti up against the plastic jamb of the T-station's exit, slouched and smirking and idly shuffling a deck of cards in his hands — was always quick to point out the spastic delicacy with which the patrons dropped change or $ into Barry Loach's hand, these kind of bullwhip-motions or jagged in-and-outs like they were trying to get something hot off a burner, never touching him, and they rarely broke stride or even made eye-contact as they tossed alms B.L.'s way, much less ever getting their hand anywhere close to contact with B.L.'s disreputable hand.

Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996. p969.

[dfwvocab]

ineluctable

ineluctable  (adjective) Unable to be resisted or avoided; inescapable

...so he opined what should he expect but that his own little brother, no less than the coldest commuter passing the outstretched hands of the homeless and needy at Park Street Station, should be all-too-humanly concerned with nothing but the care and feeding of Numero Uno. Since a basic absence of empathy and compassion and taking-the-risk-to-reach-out seemed to him now an ineluctable part of the human character.

Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996. p967.

[dfwvocab]

ciquatoxin

ciguatoxin  (noun) Ciguatoxins are a class of poisonous organic compounds found in some fish that cause ciguatera.

In outline form, the saga goes that Loach grew up as the youngest child of an enormous Catholic family, the parents of which were staunch Catholics of the old school of extremely staunch Catholicism, and that Mrs. Loach (as in the mom)'s life's most fervent wish was that one of her countless children would enter the R.C. clergy, but that the eldest Loach boy had done a two-year U.S.N. bit and had gotten de-mapped early on in the Brazilian O.N.A.N./U.N. joint action of Y.T.M.P.; and that within weeks of the wake the next oldest Loach boy had died of ciquatoxic food-poisoning eating tainted blackfin grouper; and the next oldest Loach, Therese, through a series of adolescent misadventures had ended up in Atlantic City NJ as one of the women in sequined leotards and high heels who carries a large posterboard card with the Round # on it around the ring between rounds of professional fights, so that hopes for Therese becoming a Carmelite dimmed considerably; and on down the line, one Loach falling helplessly in love and marrying right out of high school, another burning only to play the cymbals with a first-rate philharmonic (now crashing away with the Houston P.O.).

Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996. p967.

** One of DFW's (intentional) misspellings?

[dfwvocab]

malleolus

malleolus  (noun) Anatomy A bony projection with a shape likened to a hammer head, especially each of those on either side of the ankle.

Barry Loach was down on one knee shaving Hal's left ankle for tape. A couple of us remarked how Hal wasn't eating the usual customary Snickers bar or AminoPal. Hal had his hands on Loach's shoulders as the tape went on. A match-wrap is two horizontal layers just above the malleolus knob-thing, then straight down and four times around the tarsus just in front of the joint, so there's a big gap for flexion of the joint, but a compacting and supportive wrap. Then Loach puts a liner-sock and a wick-sock over the tape, then slides on the little inflatable AirCast deal and pumps it to the right pressure, checking with a little gauge, and Velcros it just tight enough for support plus max-flexion. Hal was on the bench with his hands on Loach's shoulders through the whole little routine. Everybody's had his hands on Loach's shoulders at one time or another. Hal's shave and wrap take four minutes.

Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996. p966.

[dfwvocab]

piaffer

piaffe 

(noun) A movement performed in advanced dressage and classical riding, in which the horse executes a slow, elevated trot without moving forward.

(verb) (Of a horse) perform a piaffe.

The Csikszentmihalyi kid was doing a kind of piaffer in place, his knees hitting his chest, stretching his hip-flexors out. Troeltsch sat up against his locker near Wayne, wearing a disconnected headset and broadcasting his own match in advance. There were fart-accusations and -denials. Rader snapped a towel at Wagenknecht, who liked to stand for long periods of time bent at the waist with his head against his knees. Arslanian sat very still in a corner, blindfolded in what was either an ascot or a very fey necktie, his head cocked in the attitude of the blind.

Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996. p965.

[dfwvocab]

kyphotic

kyphosis  (noun) Medicine Excessive outward curvature of the spine, causing hunching of the back. Compare with lordosis.

Orin had liked also to recreate for us the spooky kyphotic hunch of Himself's mother, in her wheelchair, beckoning him closer with a claw, the way she seemed always caved in over and around her chest as if she'd been speared there. An air of deep dehydration had hung about her, he said, as if she osmosized moisture from whoever came near. She spent her last few years living in the Marlboro St. brownstone they'd had before Mario and I were born, tended by a gerontologic nurse Orin said always wore the expression of every post-office mug shot you've ever seen. When the nurse was off, a small silver bell was apparently hung from an arm of the old lady's wheelchair, to be rung when she could not breathe. A cheery silver tinkle announcing asphyxiation upstairs. Mrs. Clarke would still pale whenever Mario asked about her.

Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996. p953.

[dfwvocab]

seraglio

seraglio  (noun)

The women’s apartments (harem) in an Ottoman palace.

The women inhabiting a seraglio or harem.

A Turkish or Ottoman palace, especially the Sultan’s court and government offices at Constantinople.

Between the ages of eleven and thirteen I'd had a plaster knock-off of a lewd Constantine frieze, the emperor with a hyperemic organ and an impure expression, hung by two hooks from the guilloche's lower border. Now I couldn't for the life of me recall what I'd done with the frieze, or which Byzantine seraglio the original had decorated. There had been a time when data like these were instantly available.

Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996. p952.

[dfwvocab]

gambrel

gambrel  (noun)

A roof with two sides, each of which has a shallower slope above a steeper one

A hip roof with a small gable forming the upper part of each end

I remembered climbing with a dawdler's heavy tread the cement steps up from the street to a gambrel-roofed late-Victorian whose narrow height from the steps gave it the distended look of thick liquid hanging: gingerbread eaves, undulate shingles of weathered red, zinc gutters the Moms's graduate students came and kept clean.

Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996. p950.

[dfwvocab]

finial

finial  (noun)

A distinctive ornament at the apex of a roof, pinnacle, canopy, or similar structure in a building

An ornament at the top, end, or corner of an object

One of the street's homes had a pineapple finial.

Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996. p950.

[dfwvocab]

sinciput

sinciput  (noun) Anatomy The front of the skull from the forehead to the crown

On the FM band, WYYY was apparently doing its weather-report via mimesis, broadcasting raw static while the student staff doubtless did bongs in celebration of the storm and then went up sliding around the Union's cerebral rooftop. The Hancock camera's pan included the sinciput of the M.I.T. Union, its roof's convolutions filling with snow ahead of the rest of it, creepy filigrees of white against the roof's deep gray.

Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996. p950.

[dfwvocab]

catadioptric

catadioptric  (adjective) Optics Denoting an optical system that involves both the reflecting and refracting of light, in order to reduce aberration

'The mount's the barrel. The mount's what the elements of the lens are arranged in. This crib-lens's mount projected out way farther than a conventional lens, but it wasn't near as big around as a catadioptric lens. It looked more like an eye-stalk or a night-vision scope than a lens. Long and skinny and projecting, with this slight wobble. I don't know much about lenses beyond basic concepts like length and speed. Lenses were Jim's forte. This can't be much of a surprise. He always had a whole case full. He paid more attention to the lenses and lights than to the camera. His other son carried them in a special case. Leith was cameras, the son was lenses. Lenses Jim said were what he had to bring to the whole enterprise. Of filmmaking. Of himself. He made all his own.’

Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996. p939.

[dfwvocab]

epicene

epicene  (adjective)

Having characteristics of both sexes or no characteristics of either sex; of indeterminate sex

Effeminate; effete

'The actor was male. He wasn't one of Jim's regulars. But the character I recognize in the door is epicene.’

Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996. p939.

[dfwvocab]

proprioception

proprioceptive  (adjective) Physiology Relating to stimuli that are produced and perceived within an organism, especially those connected with the position and movement of the body. Compare with exteroceptive and interoceptive.

And so but P.H.-J.'s point, which Gately has to just about crack her scalp open flicking out of her: Gwendine O'Shay, familiar with Eighties Bill and his Y.U. Bulldog sentimentality, plus cranially soft as a fucking grape, O'Shay took Fackelmann's call wrong, thought Fackelmann said Eighties Bill wanted 125K with (-2) points on Yale instead of (-2) on Brown, put Fackelmann on Hold and made him listen to Irish Muzak while she put in a call to a Yale Athletic Dept. mole out of Sorkin's Read-Protected database's MOLE file and learned that the Yale U. Bulldogs' star power forward had been diagnosed with an extremely rare neurologic disorder called Post-Coital Vestibulitis in which for several hours after intercourse the power forward tended to suffer such a terrible vertiginous loss of proprioception that he literally couldn't tell his ass from his elbow, much less make an authoritative move to the bucket.

Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996. p928.

[dfwvocab]

shillelagh

shillelagh  (noun) A thick stick of blackthorn or oak used in Ireland, typically as a weapon.

But so the point is that the person that took Fackelmann's call about Eighties Bill's mammoth Yale-Brown bet wasn't in fact Sorkin but rather Sorkin's secretary, one Gwendine O'Shay, the howitzer-breasted old Green-Cardless former I.R.A.-moll who'd gotten hit on the head with a truncheon by a godless Belfast Bobbie once too often back on the Old Sod, and whose skull now was (in Fackelmann's own terminology) soft as puppy-shit in the rain, but who had just the seedy sort of distracted-grandmotherly air that makes her perfect for clapping her red-knuckled old hands to her cheeks and squealing as she claimed Mass Lottery lottery winnings whenever Whitey Sorkin and his MA-Statehouse bagmen-cronies arrange to have a Sorkinite buy a mysteriously winning Mass Lottery ticket from one of the countless convenience stores Sorkin & cronies own through dummy corporations all up and down the North Shore, and who, because she could not only give what Sorkin claimed was the only adequate cervical massage west of the Berne Hot Alp Springs Center but also could both word-process a shocking 110 wpm and wield a shillelagh like nobody's business — plus had been W. Sorkin's dear late I.R.A.-moll Mum's Scrabble-pal back in Belfast, on the Old Sod — served as Whitey's chief administrative aide, manning the cellular phones when Sorkin was out or indisposed.

Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996. p927.