Thomas De Quincey

-ics

All parts of knowledge have their origin in metaphysics, and finally, perhaps, revolve into it.

Aberrate

Their own defective and aberrating vision.

Abeyance

Keeping the sympathies of love and admiration in a dormant state, or state of abeyance.

Aceldama

The system of warfare . . . which had already converted immense tracts into one universal aceldama.

Acephalous

A false or acephalous structure of sentence.

Acquiesce

They were compelled to acquiesce in a government which they did not regard as just.

Adduce

Enough could not be adduced to satisfy the purpose of illustration.

Adequate

Ireland had no adequate champion.

Adhesion

His adhesion to the Tories was bounded by his approbation of their foreign policy.

Agonistic

As a scholar, he [Dr. Parr] was brilliant, but he consumed his power in agonistic displays.

Almighty

Poor Aroar can not live, and can not die, -- so that he is in an almighty fix.

Ambidexterity

Ignorant I was of the human frame, and of its latent powers, as regarded speed, force, and ambidexterity.

Amend

An instant emergency, granting no possibility for revision, or opening for amended thought.

Anabasis

The anabasis of Napoleon.

Analogous

Analogous tendencies in arts and manners.

Anecdotage

All history, therefore, being built partly, and some of it altogether, upon anecdotage, must be a tissue of lies.

Antinomy

Different commentators have deduced from it the very opposite doctrines. In some instances this apparent antinomy is doubtful.

Aphoristic

The method of the book is aphoristic.

Apparitor

Before any of his apparitors could execute the sentence, he was himself summoned away by a sterner apparitor to the other world.

Archaism

A select vocabulary corresponding (in point of archaism and remoteness from ordinary use) to our Scriptural vocabulary.

Armigerous

They belonged to the armigerous part of the population, and were entitled to write themselves Esquire.

Assign

It is not easy to assign a period more eventful.

Atrocious

Revelations . . . so atrocious that nothing in history approaches them.

Bah

Twenty-five years ago the vile ejaculation, Bah! was utterly unknown to the English public.

Barbarize

The Roman empire was barbarizing rapidly from the time of Trajan.

Bias

Me it had not biased in the one direction, nor should it have biased any just critic in the counter direction.

Bouncer

The stone must be a bouncer.

Can

Yet he could not but acknowledge to himself that there was something calculated to impress awe, . . . in the sudden appearances and vanishings . . . of the masque

Canorous

A long, lound, and canorous peal of laughter.

Casuistry

Casuistry in the science of cases (i.e., oblique deflections from the general rule).

Cataphysical

Some artists . . . have given to Sir Walter Scott a pile of forehead which is unpleassing and cataphysical.

Category

There is in modern literature a whole class of writers standing within the same category.

Cite

Cited by finger of God.

Coalesce

Certain combinations of ideas that, once coalescing, could not be shaken loose.

Conscious

The man who breathes most healthilly is least conscious of his own breathing.

Contretemps

In this unhappy contretemps.

Counterpole

The German prose offers the counterpole to the French style.

Court

Guilt and misery . . . court privacy and solitude.

Crimson

Ancient towers . . . beginning to crimson with the radiant luster of a cloudless July morning.

Crotchet

He ruined himself and all that trusted in him by crotchets that he could never explain to any rational man.

Crude

Crude, undigested masses of suggestion, furnishing rather raw materials for composition.

Cumbrous

That cumbrousand unwieldy style which disfigures English composition so extensively.

Deep

A question deep almost as the mystery of life.

Defeatured

Features when defeatured in the . . . way I have described.

Dent

A blow that would have made a dent in a pound of butter.

Deplume

The exposure and depluming of the leading humbugs of the age.

Dereligionize

He would dereligionize men beyond all others.

Descant

Upon that simplest of themes how magnificent a descant!

Devolution

The devolution of the crown through a . . . channel known and conformable to old constitutional requisitions.

Diction

His diction blazes up into a sudden explosion of prophetic grandeur.

Discontinuous

A path that is zigzag, discontinuous, and intersected at every turn by human negligence.

do

He was not be done, at his time of life, by frivolous offers of a compromise that might have secured him seventy-five per cent.

Dole

The supercilious condescension with which even his reputed friends doled out their praises to him.

Dowle

No feather, or dowle of a feather.

Drakestone

Internal earthquakes, that, not content with one throe, run along spasmodically, like boys playing at what is called drakestone.

Drape

The whole people were draped professionally.

Durable

An interest which from its object and grounds must be so durable.

Eariness

The sense of eariness, as twilight came on.

Emanate

That subsisting from of government from which all special laws emanate.

Engross

Laws that may be engrossed on a finger nail.

Enormity

The enormity of his learned acquisitions.

Entertain

I am not here going to entertain so large a theme as the philosophy of Locke.

Entwine

With whose imperial laurels might entwine no cypress.

Epichorial

Epichorial superstitions from every district of Europe.

Epiphany

An epic poet, if ever such a difficult birth should make its epiphany in Paris.

Esoteric

Enough if every age produce two or three critics of this esoteric class, with here and there a reader to understand them.

Eudemonist

I am too much of a eudæmonist; I hanker too much after a state of happiness both for myself and others.

Evanesce

I believe him to have evanesced or evaporated.

Evoke

A regulating discipline of exercise, that whilst evoking the human energies, will not suffer them to be wasted.

Executant

Great executants on the organ.

Exoteric

The foppery of an exoteric and esoteric doctrine.

Factitious

He acquires a factitious propensity, he forms an incorrigible habit, of desultory reading.

Fade

His masculine taste gave him a sense of something fade and ludicrous.

Fancy

At a great book sale in London, which had congregated all the fancy.

Fash

Without further fash on my part.

Ferment

The intellect of the age was a fermenting intellect.

Fix

Is he not living, then? No. is he dead, then? No, nor dead either. Poor Aroar can not live, and can not die, -- so that he is in an almighty fix.

Flagrant

A young man yet flagrant from the lash of the executioner or the beadle.

Fluent

Fluent as the flight of a swallow is the sultan's letter.

Fluxion

Less to be counted than the fluxions of sun dials.

Focalize

Light is focalized in the eye, sound in the ear.

Foible

A disposition radically noble and generous, clouded and overshadowed by superficial foibles.

Foliation

The . . . foliation must be in relation to the stem.

Forge

And off she [a ship] forged without a shock.

Fulminate

They fulminated the most hostile of all decrees.

Garrulous

The most garrulous people on earth.

Gossamery

The greatest master of gossamery affectation.

Gymnotus

One fearful shock, fearful but momentary, like that from the electric blow of the gymnotus.

Gyration

The gyrations of an ascending balloon.

Harridan

Such a weak, watery, wicked old harridan, substituted for the pretty creature I had been used to see.

Histrionic

Tainted with false and histrionic feeling.

Horrent

Rough and horrent with figures in strong relief.

Illimitable

The wild, the irregular, the illimitable, and the luxuriant, have their appropriate force of beauty.

Impassive

Impassive as the marble in the quarry.

Indemnification

No reward with the name of an indemnification.

Inosculate

The several monthly divisions of the journal may inosculate, but not the several volumes.

Inscrutable

Waiving a question so inscrutable as this.

Insulated

The special and insulated situation of the Jews.

Intellectual

I kept her intellectuals in a state of exercise.

Interpolation

Bentley wrote a letter . . . . upon the scriptural glosses in our present copies of Hesychius, which he considered interpolations from a later hand.

Intervene

Self-sown woodlands of birch, alder, etc., intervening the different estates.

Irritation

The whole body of the arts and sciences composes one vast machinery for the irritation and development of the human intellect.

Lag

She lags us if we poach.

Latitudinarianism

Fierce sectarianism bred fierce latitudinarianism.

Lection

We ourselves are offended by the obtrusion of the new lections into the text.

Letch

Some people have a letch for unmasking impostors, or for avenging the wrongs of others.

Limitary

The poor, limitary creature calling himself a man of the world.

Literator

That class of subjects which are interesting to the regular literator or black-letter “ bibliomane,” simply because they have once been interesting.

Literatus

Now we are to consider that our bright ideal of a literatus may chance to be maimed.

Livery

From the periodical deliveries of these characteristic articles of servile costume (blue coats) came our word livery.

Lock

Albemarle Street closed by a lock of carriages.

Ludicrous

A chapter upon German rhetoric would be in the same ludicrous predicament as Van Troil's chapter on the snakes of Iceland, which delivers its business in one summary sentence, announcing, that snakes in Iceland -- there are none.

Masquerade

That masquerade of misrepresentation which invariably accompanied the political eloquence of Rome.

merge

Whig and Tory were merged and swallowed up in the transcendent duties of patriots.

Monology

It was not by an insolent usurpation that Coleridge persisted in monology through his whole life.

Mystification

The reply of Pope seems very much as though he had been playing off a mystification on his Grace.

Naïveté

A story which pleases me by its naïveté -- that is, by its unconscious ingenuousness.

Nexus

Man is doubtless one by some subtile nexus . . . extending from the new-born infant to the superannuated dotard.

Oblique

This mode of oblique research, when a more direct one is denied, we find to be the only one in our power.

Ology

He had a smattering of mechanics, of physiology, geology, mineralogy, and all other ologies whatsoever.

Opprobrium

Being both dramatic author and dramatic performer, he found himself heir to a twofold opprobrium.

Orbicular

Orbicular as the disk of a planet.

Organology

The science of style, as an organ of thought, of style in relation to the ideas and feelings, might be called the organology of style.

Ornithomancy

Ornithomancy grew into an elaborate science.

Oscillate

The amount of superior families oscillates rather than changes, that is, it fluctuates within fixed limits.

Overgloom

Overgloomed by memories of sorrow.

Paling

They moved within the paling of order and decorum.

Petrify

The poor, petrified journeyman, quite unconscious of what he was doing.

Picturesque

What is picturesque as placed in relation to the beautiful and the sublime? It is . . . the characteristic pushed into a sensible excess.

Pique

Wars had arisen . . . upon a personal pique.

Plausibility

To give any plausibility to a scheme.

Propagate

Motion propagated motion, and life threw off life.

Protagonist

Shakespeare, the protagonist on the great of modern poetry.

Pseudo-romantic

The false taste, the pseudo-romantic rage.

Puerile

The French have been notorious through generations for their puerile affectation of Roman forms, models, and historic precedents.

Quantification

The quantification of the predicate belongs in part to Sir William Hamilton; viz., in its extension to negative propositions.

Quarter

Every creature that met us would rely on us for quartering.

Quiddity

The quiddity or characteristic difference of poetry as distinguished from prose.

Rat

Coleridge . . . incurred the reproach of having ratted, solely by his inability to follow the friends of his early days.

Raw

Approved himself to the raw judgment of the multitude.

Like savage hackney coachmen, they know where there is a raw.

Recalcitrate

The more heartily did one disdain his disdain, and recalcitrate his tricks.

Recoil

The solemnity of her demeanor made it impossible . . . that we should recoil into our ordinary spirits.

Rectification

After the rectification of his views, he was incapable of compromise with profounder shapes of error.

Recusant

The last rebellious recusants among the European family of nations.

Remotion

The whitish gleam [of the stars] was the mask conferred by the enormity of their remotion.

Resonant

Through every hour of the golden morning, the streets were resonant with female parties of young and old.

Rid

In never ridded myself of an overmastering and brooding sense of some great calamity traveling toward me.

Rigmarole

Often one's dear friend talks something which one scruples to call rigmarole.

Rigorous

We do not connect the scattered phenomena into their rigorous unity.

Rime

The trees were now covered with rime.

Rubric

Nay, as a duty, it had no place or rubric in human conceptions before Christianity.

Runagate

Wretched runagates from the jail.

Sanatory

Sanatory ordinances for the protection of public health, such as quarantine, fever hospitals, draining, etc.

Sanction

Would have counseled, or even sanctioned, such perilous experiments.

Scene

Probably no lover of scenes would have had very long to wait for some explosions between parties, both equally ready to take offense, and careless of giving it.

Scenic

All these situations communicate a scenical animation to the wild romance, if treated dramatically.

Scrap

I have no materials -- not a scrap.

Sequacious

Milton was not an extensive or discursive thinker, as Shakespeare was; for the motions of his mind were slow, solemn, and sequacious, like those of the planets.

Severally

There must be an auditor to check and revise each severally by itself.

Shade

New shades and combinations of thought.

Shilly-shally

She lost not one of her forty-five minutes in picking and choosing, -- no shilly-shally in Kate.

Shipshape

Even then she expressed her scorn for the lubbery executioner's mode of tying a knot, and did it herself in a shipshape orthodox manner.

Significance

With this brain I must work, in order to give significancy and value to the few facts which I possess.

Sip

A sip is all that the public ever care to take from reservoirs of abstract philosophy.

Sluice

He dried his neck and face, which he had been sluicing with cold water.

Smug

The smug and scanty draperies of his style.

Snob

Those who work for lower wages during a strike are called snobs, the men who stand out being “nobs”

Somnolent

He had no eye for such phenomena, because he had a somnolent want of interest in them.

Special

To this special evil an improvement of style would apply a special redress.

Stamina

He succeeded to great captains who had sapped the whole stamina and resistance of the contest.

Substitute

Ladies [in Shakespeare's age] . . . wore masks as the sole substitute known to our ancestors for the modern parasol.

Subsultory

Flippancy opposed to solemnity, the subsultory to the continuous, -- these are the two frequent extremities to which the French manner betrays men.

Subsume

To subsume one proposition under another.

Subsumption

But whether you see cause to go against the rule, or the subsumption under the rule.

Summation

Of this series no summation is possible to a finite intellect.

Supreme

Each would be supreme within its own sphere, and those spheres could not but clash.

Sycophantic

Sycophantic servants to the King of Spain.

Sycophantish

Sycophantish satirists that forever humor the prevailing folly.

Sylvan

The traditional memory of a rural and a sylvan region . . . is usually exact as well as tenacious.

Synchronize

The path of this great empire, through its arch of progress, synchronized with that of Christianity.

Synonym

All languages tend to clear themselves of synonyms as intellectual culture advances, the superfluous words being taken up and appropriated by new shades and combinations of thought evolved in the progress of society.

Tantamount

The certainty that delay, under these circumstances, was tantamount to ruin.

Terminology

The barbarous effect produced by a German structure of sentence, and a terminology altogether new.

Tilth

The tilth and rank fertility of its golden youth.

Tooling

The fine tooling and delicate tracery of the cabinet artist is lost upon a building of colossal proportions.

Torpedinous

Fishy were his eyes; torpedinous was his manner.

Tranquil

A style clear, tranquil, easy to follow.

Transpire

The story of Paulina's and Maximilian's mutual attachment had transpired through many of the travelers.

Travesty

The second edition is not a recast, but absolutely a travesty of the first.

Trepan

Guards even of a dozen men were silently trepanned from their stations.

Trivial

As a scholar, meantime, he was trivial, and incapable of labor.

Tumefy

To swell, tumefy, stiffen, not the diction only, but the tenor of the thought.

Tumor

Better, however, to be a flippant, than, by a revolting form of tumor and perplexity, to lead men into habits of intellect such as result from the modern vice of English style.

Tumultuary

Sudden flight or tumultuary skirmish.

Tympany

A plethoric a tautologic tympany of sentence.

Unballasted

Unballasted by any sufficient weight of plan.

Unicity

Not unity, but what the schoolmen call unicity.

Unify

A comprehensive or unifying act of the judging faculty.

Unique

The phenix, the unique of birds.

Unreliable

Alcibiades . . . was too unsteady, and (according to Mr. Coleridge's coinage) “unreliable;” or perhaps, in more correct English, too “unrelyuponable.”

Upshot

We account it frailty that threescore years and ten make the upshot of man's pleasurable existence.

Venerable

He was a man of eternal self-sacrifice, and that is always venerable.

Vernile

The example . . . of vernile scurrility.

Vertiginous

Some vertiginous whirl of fortune.

Vice

The coachman's hand was viced between his upper and lower thigh.

Vicious

A charge against Bentley of vicious reasoning.

Virtual

To mask by slight differences in the manners a virtual identity in the substance.

Virtue

A man was driven to depend for his security against misunderstanding, upon the pure virtue of his syntax.

Voluminous

Over which dusky draperies are hanging, and voluminous curtains have long since fallen.

Voluptuous

Sink back into your voluptuous repose.

Wake

This effect followed immediately in the wake of his earliest exertions.

Wield

Her newborn power was wielded from the first by unprincipled and ambitions men.

Wrench

The injurious effect upon biographic literature of all such wrenches to the truth, is diffused everywhere.