Throughout my entire life, I have been fascinated with words. By the age of two, my relatives recount, I rejoiced in discovering new ones, such that for days after I would use the word wherever possible, mustering situations in which the new confection might be put to work. As an avid reader, I’ve collected a cornucopia of words in the years since my early toddling start, such that, by now, I rarely discover new ones. Or, at least, rarely discover valuable new ones – words that bear utility while possessing a certain poesy when heard and a tangy mouth-feel when spoken.

Which is why I’ve so far particularly enjoyed Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. The first 266 pages, besides being an immensely immersive narrative, have been chock full of excellent new words, and old ones I’d somehow forgotten along the way. Consider the new additions of ‘grampus’, ‘lepidopterist’ and ‘bole’, and the rediscovery of ‘obdurate’, ‘ullage’, ‘trope’ and ‘parbuckle’, all gleaned from a short eight page chapter! Not all of Chabon’s words are to be trusted, however – no definition I’ve found for ‘pappilate’, for example, supports Chabon’s lyrically erroneous use in his description of a Luna Moth: “it rested, pappilating its wings with a certain languor like a lady fanning herself, iridescent green with a yellowish undershimmer, as big as that languid lady’s silk clutch.” Though, perhaps, I should rejoice in, rather than criticize, his reworking of meaning. After all, only by such calculated rule-breaking has language evolved, producing the dizzying abundance of words, sweet words, that we enjoy today.