Done with papers required of me for this quarter. I have to translate a comic book by Christmas Eve. I have to get a re-write of my MA paper done soon.
So, instead of those things, I will create a New Rapidly-Abandoned Pons Asinorum Tradition: The Catalog of Frequently Misused Theory Words!
Of course, I use "Theory" to mean "Literary Theory," but that is just a stand in for "English and Comp Lit grad students talking at seminars."
Today's word is "imbricated": as in, I just find it fascinating how [D.A.] Miller manages to reinscribe...no...that's not what I want to say...Somehow the strong paranoid reading that he wants to create somehow imbricates or becomes imbricated with the disappeared social, making the rhetoric the kind of the site of the collapsed social. Is this making sense?
From the OED: 1. (See quot.) Obs.
1704 J. HARRIS Lex. Techn., Imbricated is used by Mr. Tournefort, and some other Botanists, to express the Figure of the Leaves of some Plants, which are hollowed in, like an Imbrex, or Gutter-Tile. 1727-41 CHAMBERS Cycl.
2. Composed of parts (leaves, scales, or the like) which overlap like tiles. Also, covered by overlapping leaves, scales, etc.
1753 CHAMBERS Cycl. Supp., Imbricated shell,..any species of shell-fish, whose shells are elevated into transverse ridges, lying over one another at the base, in the manner of the tiles on a house-top. 1759 B. STILLINGFL. Econ. Nat. in Misc. Tracts (1762) 79 On this earth the imbricated liverworts find a bed to strike their roots in. 1858 GEIKIE Hist. Boulder iv. 46 Imbricated like the cone of the Scotch fir. 1882 Garden 1 Apr. 212/3 Another beautiful variety, having large and finely imbricated flowers.
3. Of leaves, scales, etc.: Arranged so as to overlap each other, after the manner of roof-tiles.
1753 CHAMBERS Cycl. Supp. s.v. Leaf, Imbricated leaf,..leaves placed over one another in the manner of the tiles of a house, or like the scales of fishes. 1777 PENNANT Zool. IV. 101 (Jod.) Pecten with about thirty echinated imbricated rays. 1806 J. GALPINE Brit. Bot. 20 Glumes, imbricated on every side. 1861 HULME tr. Moquin-Tandon II. III. i. 70 The Common Wood-louse... The body is oval..composed of a number of imbricated rings.
4. Resembling in pattern a surface of overlapping tiles: = IMBRICATE a. 3.
1875 FORTNUM Majolica iii. 32 Sometimes ornamented..with chequered, ‘chevroné’ or imbricated patterns.
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7 comments:
His paranoid reading forms an overlapping pattern with the disappeared social. It could make sense, up until the point where it supposedly makes the social collapse.
Are these Swan's words?
yo yo the new DFW book came out like a week ago. Consider The Lobster. CONSIDER IT!
No, no, the meaning in the OED is archaic! The word has a different sense now in Modern American English, um, because the one person who uses it doesn't know how.
Anonymous: Who I can only assume is Adam K., because I can only assume the person meant is Xuan and Adam K. is the only one I know of who reads this and who might have been present: yes, actually, that is who I am quoting. But if you are someone else who is wondering if these words are somehow proustian, I say thee nay.
Say thee nay all you want. What are you up to this week?
Got a translation to start on today, but other than that, not much.
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