Avi

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Spices and herbs

City of OrphansIf you were writ­ing a book set in the four­teenth cen­tu­ry, you might describe a char­ac­ter as “whis­per­ing,” but might that char­ac­ter say, “whis­per to me”?

No, because it is not until Shake­speare used the word, in 1609 in his play, Per­i­cles, that it enters the writ­ten language.

I know this because I checked with my (online) Oxford Unabridged Dic­tio­nary of the Eng­lish Lan­guage (ref­er­enced often as the OED).

Does it mat­ter in your writ­ing? I sup­pose the answer is yes and no. Would you have an ancient Briton look out upon a Roman Legion for the first time and mut­ter, “Total­ly awe­some.” I think not. How­ev­er, no one will clap you into jail if you do. Still, if you love words—I do—I think it makes a difference.

Obvi­ous­ly, I do not check every word.

Sophia's WarNonethe­less, my own rule for this is that if I can use a key word from the time about which I am writ­ing, which is self-explana­to­ry, I will use it. Thus in City of Orphans, a teenag­er is described as “pout-mouthed.” Any­one who knows chil­dren will instant­ly under­stand this mar­velous word, which was used around the turn of the Nine­teenth Cen­tu­ry. Since I stum­bled upon it, I have used it in oth­er works and in con­ver­sa­tion. You are wel­come to spread the word. Pout-mouthed. Total­ly awesome.

In my most recent­ly pub­lished book, Sophia’s War, set in New York City dur­ing the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion, I used some of the vocab­u­lary cur­rent at that time. I even put a glos­sary of these words at the back of the book, such as “glowflies” (fire­flies) or “pix­ie-led” (con­fused).

A cur­rent project, set in Fif­teenth Cen­tu­ry Eng­land, uses such words as “brain­sick” for crazy, “mis­for­tuned” for poor, and “drea­r­i­head­ed,” for sad. They are accu­rate for the time. I think of these words as the spices and herbs one uses to fla­vor a stew, a word, I need cau­tion you, that only enters the writ­ten Eng­lish lan­guage in 1594.

Do not take me at my word. Check the OED.

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