Jack Vance - The Jack Vance Lexicon: The coined words of Jack Vance: from abiloid to zygage

THE JACK VANCE LEXICON

THE COINED WORDS OF JACK VANCE:
FROM ABILOID TO ZYGAGE

Second Edition

Dan Temianka

Copyright 1992, 1995 and 2016

Cover art by Howard Kistler

Published by Spatterlight

E-book creation by Black Bee Media

ISBN 978-1-61947-100-9

FOREWORD

After the publication of The Jack Vance Lexicon by Underwood-Miller and Borgo Press, respectively, more than twenty years ago, Jack Vance wrote three additional novels: Night Lamp, Ports of Call and Lurulu. In those works he continued his incorrigible coining of neologisms, some 160 of them, which have been integrated into this second edition.

This volume would not have been possible without the dedication of these fine gentlemen, who are possessed of true :

Dan Temianka

June 2015

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

We jabber and babble endlessly, out loud and on paper. In the technical lingo of the electrical engineer or the mutterings of the wino, in comic strips, novels, graffiti, or the parlance of academic journals, we indulge in this frenetic process day and night, around the world. We humans are a huge orchestra, constantly noodling with those wonderful wind instruments, our mouths, and (in the case of sign language) with those faithful puppets, our hands and fingers.

We trowel nouns like adjectives, load and fire them as though they were verbs. We wrench our linguistic roots from the earth and clumsily graft suffixes, prefixes or spare-part slang onto them; we hurl grotesque linguistic hybrids about us with the insouciance of two-year-olds flinging their pablum.

Thus are new words born.

SOME DISTINGUISHED WORDSMITHS

But new language also blooms from the not-so-clumsy utterances of certain individual writers, particularly in the field of speculative fiction. At least since Lewis Carroll intrigued his readers with Jabberwocky, there have been writers Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Dr. Seuss and many others who mint new words in addition to new concepts. Such writers are active volcanic vents, spewing out new words like fresh lava. In A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess invented an entire dialect (Nadsat, a Russified version of English) I could sort of slooshy myself making special sort of shoms and govoreeting slovos like Dear dead idlewilds, rot not in variform guises and all that cal. This is fresh, serviceable language, not merely humdrum technical derivatives or the names of gadgets and aliens, and has certifiable potential to enter the English language. Frank Herbert was also no slouch at wordvention: chaumurky, sietch, filtplug, heighliner, and the ridulian crystals are a few examples from Dune.

But for sheer variety, quantity, and above all, charm of his neologisms, I submit that none can compare with Jack Vance, a.k.a. John Holbrook Vance. As Jack Rawlins said, to make up words that carry just the right scent, that strike the reader as new and familiar simultaneously, is extremely challenging, and Vance is a master at it. Such words can be found in virtually all of his hundreds of stories and novels, more so in those we call science fantasy, or simply fantasy, than in his science fiction. (His mystery and detective works are, in this respect, staid.) It is not unusual for a single novel to have fifty or more newly created words; in The Face there are close to a hundred.

He created them with the instinct of a pack rat ferrying knickknacks. In The Magnificent Showboats, Apollon Zamp advertises for musicians who play instruments of the following categories: in the space of two orgiastic paragraphs, in addition to half a dozen other species such as antler fish and sea scrags, which, though novel enough, are not true neologisms. (This distinction can be maddeningly subtle, as well see later on.)

THE PERSONAL DICTIONARY

The invention of interesting new words in numbers sufficient to justify ones own dictionary is a remarkable achievement. G.T. McWhorters Burroughs Dictionary is comparable, but consists primarily of characters and places from Edgar Rice Burroughs fiction, as its full title implies, the extraordinarily detailed compendium of Herbertian lore, which includes many generic new words.

But the present work, like its predecessor From Ahulph to Zipangote, is perhaps the first true personal dictionary of one authors work. From Abiloid to Zygage (second edition) now includes some 1800 words drawn from all of his stories and novels.

This second edition is also informed by the Vance Integral Edition (VIE), a six-year worldwide effort by Vances readers and admirers to produce a complete and corrected forty-four volume set of his works. These texts, now the definitive versions of Vances oeuvre, are also available from Spatterlight Press. This edition of the Lexicon retains some more familiar but now obsolete titles, and indicates Vances preferred title in the Abbreviations section.

A considerable amount of contextual information has been included in many entries. Can one define be explained without quoting extensively from Vances vivid explanations? To Vance-lovers, the inclusion of such ancillary material requires no apology; they are in love. To those coming to Vance for the first time, it may add richness and depth.

SOME CATEGORIES

Vances neologisms can be stratified according to several criteria. As parts of speech, most of them are nouns, and the majority of these are plants and animals and/or foods. Others designate musical instruments or weapons, define magical spells, crystallize cultural concepts or rituals, or encompass metaphors. Some, such as (the latter alleged by the author to have been drawn from the ancient Welsh).

The adjectives are always vivid: the colors (contracted from Viasvar and abbreviated Vv).

Or the words may be categorized according to whether they are intended to be English. Clearly most of them are; we are expected to read them without recoiling, though we may grope for a dictionary. Others are implicitly or expressly taken from an imaginary tongue, e.g. Paonese, or the idiom of the Dirdir, or that of the Water-folk (e.g. the shibbolethic ). Both English and non-English neologisms are included herein.

But the most interesting way of analyzing Vances neologisms is by guessing at their etymology.

A SPECULATIVE ETYMOLOGY

Vances coined words fall into roughly seven categories, which shade into one another like colors in the spectrum. I list these divisions in order of decreasing distance from English.

1. Those which appear to have come into the world de novo, from stem to suffix. We can think of no corollary, and feel little or no resonance with known words. Examples: (translation uncertain).
2. Those that tantalize us with faint echoes of known words. The morphemes are rather familiar, but overall we cannot place them: (a scale from the body of the demon Sadlark).
3. Words that are another neighborhood closer to reality. The echoes are louder, yet we yearn to hear them more clearly. These are hauntingly familiar growths, like catafalque trees and hangman trees, as Terry Dowling put it..