Choosing words, choosing weapons (feat. handy resources list!)

I sometimes think pretty hard about the words and orders of words that I use when composing Cosmic Warlord Kin-Bright. This post contains some notes on the topic: what I’m doing, some of the tacit politics at play in my choices, and at the end a few notes on resources that you can use in picking words in your own writing. I am once again filing this under 'Tech Discussion' on the grounds that language is a poem's tech. Let's see if anyone yells at me!

In its choices of words and word-orders, CWKB wants to ransack English's resources. 

It loves subject-object-verb (SOV) syntax alongside present-day English’s more usual subject-verb-object (SVO) syntax, for instance.

        A tyrant worm [S] our mountain’s folk [O] torments [V]  

That doesn’t mean I never use SVO syntax in the poem! I write SVO sentences pretty often. But SOV provides variation. For similar reasons, I place adjectives after the nouns that they modify more often than is typical in present-day English.

These features also echo some of the syntax of some of my Latin and earlier English influences. And, and this is more inside baseball, it echoes the syntax used by earlier—and much better—English poets who’ve had some of the same Latin influences; the stand-out figure here is John Milton, whose word order achieves a kind of aggressive Latinity  that’s never since been equalled. Perhaps for good reasons.

CWKB also wants to thump out words like caitiff and bane and chthonic without irony: all unusual words, but unusual words that stem from different etymological heritages. In almost all cases, I try to avoid words that have died out absolutely and in all varieties of English, but I don’t shy away from words which remain in use in particular localised strains of English (or Scots), or as niche archaisms.

In part, CWKB wants this because I think those words and word-orders are cool. In part, it wants this because words and syntax with a stranger edge charm and engage readers, and can help us see our own world differently.

There is a tacit politics of language at play too. In part, it wants this because I fear that we too often see English, so widespread, as a transparent and default medium. In fact, studied closely, English abounds with knots of weirdness and strange powers. Knowlessmen will tell you, in a rather orientalising way, that an inscrutable language like Japanese has dense socially-specific codes and English doesn’t; such knowlessmen have never really listened when actual English-speakers navigate (say) a break-up, a job interview, a quest for gender-affirming care, or dinner at an Oxford college.

When these knots of weirdness and these strange powers are brought out, I think we more easily remember that it is a language like any other. For a long time, English wasn't even the most prestigious language in England itself. It only became an interchange language through historical processes. Should humanity carry on, English won't hold that role forever, and history will one day discard it.

In the light shed by e(n)stranged English writing, we more easily see how all other tongues, too, have their own lovely knots of weirdness and their own strange powers.

A matter of much more local, but perhaps amusing, utility: because of how humans are when they talk about sex, present-day English has no words related to sex that don’t sound somehow wrong, always too technical, too stilted, too crude, or too funny. As I begin drafting the book in which Kin-Bright and Qwerthart sleep together for the first time, earlier English is coming to my rescue here too.

One thing, meanwhile, I desperately avoid: new, wholly made-up words. I admire people who write science fiction or fantasy with constructed languages, and I’ve enjoyed a bunch of works along those lines, but I personally didn’t fancy trying my hand at it. When this approach goes wrong, it leads to too many sentences containing Italicised Nouns that the Reader must store in a big Pile and prepare to recall if they want to enjoy the Writing. 

Therefore, everything in Kin-Bright has a real etymology. Often that will be an obscure etymology; in a few cases I’ve generated a name and deliberately forgotten how I did it. Some of my compounds are, as far as I’m aware, original to English—but they still use real pre-existing words.

Tools for ransacking English’s vocabulary

• The Oxford English Dictionary is the gold standard for understanding the etymology of English words. (That doesn’t mean it’s always right!) Sadly, it’s a paid-for resource. However, if you’re a student, your university might subscribe, and if your university subscribes then you should be able to access the OED online through your library system regardless of what you’re studying. So student creators of itch should absolutely see whether they can consult this! Public library systems sometimes also subscribe.
• Wiktionary is remarkably good for a free, collaboratively-constructed resource. Its provision of etymological information knocks a lot of the other free dictionaries online into a cocked hat, and its etymons often come hyperlinked so you can trace cognates and word histories. And it won’t waste your time tossing ads at your ad-blocker (please use an ad-blocker). I often go to Wiktionary if I’m in a hurry and don’t need the detail and stronger confidence that the OED provides.
• Etymology Online is a decent, free halfway house between Wiktionary's speed and the OED's detail.
• Old English Translator lets you bang in present-day English words and see what Old English (English up to c. 1150) would have used. Now, ‘Translator’ is putting it a bit strongly: what this actually does is search the present-day English definitions in earlier dictionaries of Old English, and serve up the relevant OE words. When the dictionaries don’t use a present-day English word in their definitions, you won’t get results. One has to think about what kinds of words existing dictionaries will have used in their definitions. But it’s a handy place to see if English once had words for something that it has since lost.
• Bosworth-Toller Online and the Middle English Dictionary: both free and publicly available, both useful for back-checking. The MED has a handy 'search definition and notes' option. The OED's etymological information often trumps that in the MED, especially for recently-updated OED entries.
• Alliteration Applications: a rhyming dictionary but for alliteration, and it can cope with letter clusters. Far from my only tool for alliterative verse composition, but it has sometimes reminded me of handy, relevant words.
• Thesaurus.com has gotten notably worse in the last year or so; decent internet thesauruses include OneLook (which  has useful part-of-speech distinction) and Moby. This is one tool category for which, if you've money, space, and stability, a physical thesaurus can reward the investment. I like the Oxford Pocket Thesaurus, though bear in mind that the 'pocket' in the title is pretty optimistic!

I should give a shout-out here, too, to the wider list of tools maintained at Onym—more handy things appear there, including some for handling tongues beyond English.

No one's obliged, of course, to think this hard about the order, force, and origins of words. Nor do I think this hard all the time about it! But if any of these tools lend someone else a hand, I'll be glad; I'd be glad, too, to hear of any other handy resources!