FRATERNAL FILMS

29th January 2012

Post

BIRR

birr \bur, noun:

1. A whirring sound.
2. Emphasis in statement, speech, etc.
3. A whirring sound.

verb:
1. To move with or make a whirring sound.

She pursed her lips and, expertly, imitated the red-winged blackbird’s call: not the liquid piping of the wood thrush, which dipped down into the dry tcch tchh tchh of the cricket’s birr and up again in delirious, sobbing trills…
— Donna Tartt, The Little Friend: A Novel

I turn to the woman. There’s a wheezing birr coming from her own bleached-out face.
— Irvine Welsh, Filth

Birr is derived from the Icelandic word byrr meaning “favorable wind.”

29th January 2012

Post

HOTCHPOT

hotchpot \HOCH-pot, noun:

the bringing together of shares or properties in order to divide them equally.

She continued, “This is what I can give into the hotchpot.” I could not but note the quaint legal phrase which she used in such a place, and with all seriousness? “What will each of you give?…”
— Bram Stoker, Dracula

These amounts are to be deducted from my boys only in the event that their shares may be large enough to permit and are not to be brought into hotchpot, and shall be paid to my two daughters Elizabeth and Katharine in equal shares.
— Wallace Stevens, The Letters of Wallace Stevens

Dating back to the early 1200s, hotchpot literally meant “shake-pot” in Anglo-French. It is related to the word hodgepodge.

27th January 2012

Post reblogged from The Writing Circles with 160 notes

nerdquirks:

aubade: (noun) a love song which is sung at dawn

Source: nerdquirks

27th January 2012

Post reblogged from The Writing Circles with 79 notes

nerdquirks:

acosmist: (noun) one who believes nothing exists

Source: nerdquirks