black staccato slashes of ink
“. . . presently it was May and the warden’s newspaper began to talk in headlines two inches tall—those black staccato slashes of ink which, it would almost seem, even the illiterate should be able to read: . . . ”
—William Faulkner, Old Man, 1939.
jarns, nittles, grawlix and quimp.
Various squiggles used to denote cussing in comic books.
‘33 Names of Things You Never Knew had Names.
octothorpe.
The symbol “#” on a telephone handset. Bell Labs’ engineer Don Macpherson created the word in the 1960s by combining octo-, as in eight, with the name of one of his favourite athletes, 1912 Olympic decathlon champion Jim Thorpe.
‘33 Names of Things You Never Knew had Names.
phosphenes.
The lights you see when you close your eyes hard. Technically the luminous impressions are due to the excitation of the retina caused by pressure on the eyeball.
‘33 Names of Things You Never Knew had Names.
one jewel
“The sky was a miracle of purity, a miracle of azure. The sea was polished, was blue, was pellucid, was sparkling like a precious stone, extending on all sides, all round to the horizon—as if the whole terrestrial globe had been one jewel, one colossal sapphire, a single gem fashioned into a planet.”
—Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), Youth.
angry clouds and an infuriated sea
“The sea was white like a sheet of foam, like a caldron of boiling milk; there was not a break in the clouds, no—not the size of a man’s hand—no, not for so much as ten seconds. There was for us no sky, there were for us no stars, no sun, no universe—nothing but angry clouds and an infuriated sea.”
–Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), Youth.
grog-blossoms
“He had grog-blossoms all over his face, an indomitable energy, and was a jolly soul.”
—Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), Youth.
the Major Arcana
“Tarot cards are believed to have originated in Italy about five centuries ago for several purposes: to provide a pictorial presentation of the times, to play a card game involving suit trumps, and to read and fortell the future. . . .
During the fourteenth century in Italy a tarot pack was used to play a game called tarocco. The word tarot is the French adaptation of the word tarocco. The ancient 78-card tarot decks generally comprised fifty-six regular playing cards known as the Lesser Arcana, divided into four suits numbered 10 to 1 (or Ace) with a King, Queen, Cavalier and Page. Suit signs were the forerunners of today’s suits:
Swords or Epees = Spades
Batons, Scepters or Wands = Clubs
Cups or Coupes = Hearts
Coins, Deniers or Pentacles = Diamonds
In addition to the fifty-six cards, the tarot decks contained twenty-two pictorial cards known as Trump, Triumph, Atouts, Greater Arcana, or the Major Arcana cards, numbered from XXI to I plus an unnumbered card known as “The Fool.” Most people today are unaware that the ordinary pack of playing cards is a direct descendant from the fourteenth century tarot deck. As card playing increased in popularity the trump cards were dropped, the Cavalier and Page cards were combined into today’s Jack, and “The Fool” became the Joker, thus giving us the standard deck of fifty-two cards plus joker.”
—S.R. Kaplan, Tarot Cards for Fun and Fortune Telling, 1970. The French cards pictured above are Major Arcana from the Tarot IJJ deck.
The classic pen
“The classic pen was not a point, it was an edge; and a stiffish one too, and was not pressed upon appreciably. . . .
This tool was certainly established by the third century B.C, and was most usually made of reed (though metal pens of Roman make have been found), or of quill. . . .
Preceding either was no doubt a tool for scratching or cutting stone or bone, which became that chisel with which the magnificent Greek and Roman inscriptions were executed. . . . In only one detail of their draughtmanship is the chisel’s effect now evident, in what we call the serifs, or little finishing touches to heads and feet. . . . There was no occasion for the chisel to make strokes thin and thick except to conform to the standard set by the pen; and, indeed, we see that in the earlier Greek inscriptions, before this standard was acknowledged, the strokes are . . . fairly uniform in thickness.”
—Graily Hewitt, Lettering For Students & Craftsmen, 1930. Figure 9: “Rustic” Roman capitals from the third or fourth century.
the Old Man
“[H]e (the old man) had recovered from his debauch, back in banks again, the Old Man, rippling placidly toward the sea, brown and rich as chocolate between levees whose inner faces were wrinkled as though in a frozen and aghast amazement, crowned with the rich green of summer in the willows; . . .”
—William Faulkner, The Wild Palms, 1939.