THE LOGOPHILE LEXICON
PART IV: THE BUSINESS OF WRITING
IN THIS SECTION
4.1: The Business of Writing
4.2: Types of Writing
4.3: Obscure Words for Writing and Writers
THE LOGOPHILE LEXICON >> HOME >> INDEX
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4.1: The Business of Writing
4.2: Types of Writing
4.3: Obscure Words for Writing and Writers
THE LOGOPHILE LEXICON >> HOME >> INDEX
Download the Complete Lexicon
Part 4.3: Obscure Words for Writing and Writers
BLOTTER - similar to ‘paper-stainer’ blotter is a writer who is not doing much more than literally leaving a mark.
BOOKWOMAN - this word has had two meanings. A bookwoman (or a bookman) is someone who loves to read, but a bookwoman can also be a female writer. Many similar sexist terms used to be common, such as ‘authoress’ (a broader term than ‘murdermongress’, a word Ogden Nash used to describe Agatha Christie) and ‘sob sister’ (an advice columnist for the lovelorn, like Lois Lane’s first job in the original Superman comics).
CACOETHES SCRIBENDI - This phrase comes from the Satires by Roman writer Juvenal and means 'an irresistible desire to write.' The term is borrowed from ancient Greek, where cacoethes means 'bad habit' or 'malignant disease.' Therefore cacoethes scribendi refers to the desire to write as a compulsion, or disease - an addiction for which there is no known cure.
CATASTROPHISTA - a catastrophist refers to a specific type of pessimist - someone who thinks life is constantly falling into debacle and disaster, with the impending apocalypse right around the corner. For example, the Corona virus. This word gained popularity from the 1930s Polish Żagary movement in which writers were called catastrophists.
COLYGRAPHIA - this word can have a dual meaning. The Greek prefix ‘coly’ means to 'hinder' or 'prevent' and the word ‘graphos’ means to ‘write.' Therefore, colygraphia can either be interpreted as writer’s cramp or writer’s block. Next time you're explaining to someone that you're suffering from writer's block, tell them you're afflicted with colygraphia instead. It's more likely to get you sympathy.
COUPLETEER - one of many terms that alters the name of the type of writing. A coupleteer writes couplets, much as an ‘epigrammatarian’ writes epigrams, a ‘legendarian’ writes legends, and a ‘manuscriptor’ writes manuscripts.
DEATH-HUNTER - this sounds dark, but it’s just another type of scribbler, specifically, an obituary writer. Death-hunter has also referred to professions such as undertaker and corpse-robber.
DYSGRAPHIA - This is a problem in which one finds it hard to write legibly. The author Agatha Christie was reportedly one who suffered from it.
GRAPHOMANIA - According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this word for 'a mania for writing' was first recorded in 1840, though 'graphomaniac' first appears thirteen years earlier, in the title of a book: The Cheilead being Violent Ebullitions of Graphomaniacs.
GRIFFONAGE - Referring to handwriting, 'griffonage' describes an illegible piece of handwriting, or a scribble. The word first appeared in 1832 with a book by Frances Trollope, mother of the novelist Anthony Trollope.
HYPERGRAPHIA - This word means the overwhelming desire to write. This specific term refers to a real mental condition. Hypergraphia can afflict people with epilepsy, and certain chemicals in the brain (including dopamine) have been identified as inducing hypergraphia.
MINIATURIST - this word could plausibly refer to a maker of model ships or nanobots, but it actually describes a writer of short pieces of music or fiction. This term is still used occasionally. It turned up in a New York Times article from 1989: “Ms. Tolstaya is a miniaturist whose stories lack the political and moral resonance of the most formidable antirealists.”
MOGIGRAPHIA - This, taken from a medical dictionary of 1857, is a rare word meaning 'writer's cramp,' the horrible stiffness of the hand which afflicts many writers who prefer to compose the old-fashioned way, pen or pencil in hand. Two famous pencil-users were Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck; Steinbeck was known to blunt up to 60 pencils a day.
Graphospasm is an alternative word for mogigraphia.
PUFFER - this word was coined in the 1600s as a word for a bloviator who tended to blow empty smoke about something. Eventually, the word was attributed to a malarkey-spewer or the advertising writer. In this 1998 Chicago Tribune article it was said, “were we journalists then and we're just puffers of stories now to get numbers?”
QUILL-DRIVER - this term has been around since at least 1700, and it can refer to a clerk or secretary, but it’s also a dismissive term for a writer. Quill-driver is a synonym for pencil-pusher. Joseph Conrad’s novel Lord Jim shows how little respect the term carried: “He wouldn't be terrified with a pack of lies by a cocky half-bred little quill-driver.”
SARCAST - this noun, in print since the 1600s, refers to a sarcastic writer.
SHTURMOVSHCHINA - this refers to the practice of writing frantically just before a deadline. It comes from the former Soviet Union, when people worked at full pelt (not just at writing, but any job) in order to meet a deadline. The word literally refers to a storming or assault. Douglas Adams tells it the best. “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
SMEAR MERCHANT - seem in the the ignoble profession of smear journalism, some writers have been known as smear merchants or smear-mongers. They use smear tactics in smear sheets, where they do smear jobs.
SNOBOGRAPHER - the Oxford English Dictionary eloquently defines this word as “A writer on, a describer of, snobs.”
SQUIBBLER - this very rare term - only found in 1671 (and possibly a misspelling of squibber) - and it is a writer (scribbler) who “quibbles” or what we know from the Internet today, a writer of pretentious think pieces, snotty comments, and mean tweets. Another relevant term is ‘anonymuncle’ meaning an annoying anonymous writer. Another one is ‘ink-jerkers‘.
TOOTLER - Oxford English Dictionary defines a tootler as a “a writer of ‘tootle’, verbiage, or twaddle.” Early meanings referred to it as birdsong or the notes of a wind instrument, both of which can be pretty but rarely present a logical argument.
WRITRIX - a milestone in sexism was the rare word writrix, which can be found in an astounding 1772 sentence written by José Francisco de Isla and recorded by the Oxford a English dictionary: “Why should it not be said, she was not a common woman, but a genius, and an elegant writrix?”
BOOKWOMAN - this word has had two meanings. A bookwoman (or a bookman) is someone who loves to read, but a bookwoman can also be a female writer. Many similar sexist terms used to be common, such as ‘authoress’ (a broader term than ‘murdermongress’, a word Ogden Nash used to describe Agatha Christie) and ‘sob sister’ (an advice columnist for the lovelorn, like Lois Lane’s first job in the original Superman comics).
CACOETHES SCRIBENDI - This phrase comes from the Satires by Roman writer Juvenal and means 'an irresistible desire to write.' The term is borrowed from ancient Greek, where cacoethes means 'bad habit' or 'malignant disease.' Therefore cacoethes scribendi refers to the desire to write as a compulsion, or disease - an addiction for which there is no known cure.
CATASTROPHISTA - a catastrophist refers to a specific type of pessimist - someone who thinks life is constantly falling into debacle and disaster, with the impending apocalypse right around the corner. For example, the Corona virus. This word gained popularity from the 1930s Polish Żagary movement in which writers were called catastrophists.
COLYGRAPHIA - this word can have a dual meaning. The Greek prefix ‘coly’ means to 'hinder' or 'prevent' and the word ‘graphos’ means to ‘write.' Therefore, colygraphia can either be interpreted as writer’s cramp or writer’s block. Next time you're explaining to someone that you're suffering from writer's block, tell them you're afflicted with colygraphia instead. It's more likely to get you sympathy.
COUPLETEER - one of many terms that alters the name of the type of writing. A coupleteer writes couplets, much as an ‘epigrammatarian’ writes epigrams, a ‘legendarian’ writes legends, and a ‘manuscriptor’ writes manuscripts.
DEATH-HUNTER - this sounds dark, but it’s just another type of scribbler, specifically, an obituary writer. Death-hunter has also referred to professions such as undertaker and corpse-robber.
DYSGRAPHIA - This is a problem in which one finds it hard to write legibly. The author Agatha Christie was reportedly one who suffered from it.
GRAPHOMANIA - According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this word for 'a mania for writing' was first recorded in 1840, though 'graphomaniac' first appears thirteen years earlier, in the title of a book: The Cheilead being Violent Ebullitions of Graphomaniacs.
GRIFFONAGE - Referring to handwriting, 'griffonage' describes an illegible piece of handwriting, or a scribble. The word first appeared in 1832 with a book by Frances Trollope, mother of the novelist Anthony Trollope.
HYPERGRAPHIA - This word means the overwhelming desire to write. This specific term refers to a real mental condition. Hypergraphia can afflict people with epilepsy, and certain chemicals in the brain (including dopamine) have been identified as inducing hypergraphia.
MINIATURIST - this word could plausibly refer to a maker of model ships or nanobots, but it actually describes a writer of short pieces of music or fiction. This term is still used occasionally. It turned up in a New York Times article from 1989: “Ms. Tolstaya is a miniaturist whose stories lack the political and moral resonance of the most formidable antirealists.”
MOGIGRAPHIA - This, taken from a medical dictionary of 1857, is a rare word meaning 'writer's cramp,' the horrible stiffness of the hand which afflicts many writers who prefer to compose the old-fashioned way, pen or pencil in hand. Two famous pencil-users were Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck; Steinbeck was known to blunt up to 60 pencils a day.
Graphospasm is an alternative word for mogigraphia.
PUFFER - this word was coined in the 1600s as a word for a bloviator who tended to blow empty smoke about something. Eventually, the word was attributed to a malarkey-spewer or the advertising writer. In this 1998 Chicago Tribune article it was said, “were we journalists then and we're just puffers of stories now to get numbers?”
QUILL-DRIVER - this term has been around since at least 1700, and it can refer to a clerk or secretary, but it’s also a dismissive term for a writer. Quill-driver is a synonym for pencil-pusher. Joseph Conrad’s novel Lord Jim shows how little respect the term carried: “He wouldn't be terrified with a pack of lies by a cocky half-bred little quill-driver.”
SARCAST - this noun, in print since the 1600s, refers to a sarcastic writer.
SHTURMOVSHCHINA - this refers to the practice of writing frantically just before a deadline. It comes from the former Soviet Union, when people worked at full pelt (not just at writing, but any job) in order to meet a deadline. The word literally refers to a storming or assault. Douglas Adams tells it the best. “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
SMEAR MERCHANT - seem in the the ignoble profession of smear journalism, some writers have been known as smear merchants or smear-mongers. They use smear tactics in smear sheets, where they do smear jobs.
SNOBOGRAPHER - the Oxford English Dictionary eloquently defines this word as “A writer on, a describer of, snobs.”
SQUIBBLER - this very rare term - only found in 1671 (and possibly a misspelling of squibber) - and it is a writer (scribbler) who “quibbles” or what we know from the Internet today, a writer of pretentious think pieces, snotty comments, and mean tweets. Another relevant term is ‘anonymuncle’ meaning an annoying anonymous writer. Another one is ‘ink-jerkers‘.
TOOTLER - Oxford English Dictionary defines a tootler as a “a writer of ‘tootle’, verbiage, or twaddle.” Early meanings referred to it as birdsong or the notes of a wind instrument, both of which can be pretty but rarely present a logical argument.
WRITRIX - a milestone in sexism was the rare word writrix, which can be found in an astounding 1772 sentence written by José Francisco de Isla and recorded by the Oxford a English dictionary: “Why should it not be said, she was not a common woman, but a genius, and an elegant writrix?”
THE LOGOPHILE LEXICON IS PART OF A
SERIES OF BEAUTIFUL WORDS
A collection of Vocabulary Words & Terms By Kai of www.bykairos.com
The Collection Includes:
A Beautiful Word: Web | Download (beautiful words)
The Logophile Lexicon: Web | Book (words about words)
Defining New Ideas: Web | Book (creativity & design)
Defining the Brain: Web | Downloads (terms of the mind)
INTRODUCTION | TOPIC INDEX | DOWNLOAD
www.logophilelexicon.com
SERIES OF BEAUTIFUL WORDS
A collection of Vocabulary Words & Terms By Kai of www.bykairos.com
The Collection Includes:
A Beautiful Word: Web | Download (beautiful words)
The Logophile Lexicon: Web | Book (words about words)
Defining New Ideas: Web | Book (creativity & design)
Defining the Brain: Web | Downloads (terms of the mind)
INTRODUCTION | TOPIC INDEX | DOWNLOAD
www.logophilelexicon.com