Another new-to-me word – enisled
I was reading The Librarian by Salley Vickers when I came across the above word. New-to-me-words tend to jump off the page at me, waving their letters and demanding I look them up in dictionaries, thesauruses and/or websites.
Although I could guess the meaning, I followed the demand and found out, as expected, that the literal meaning is ‘to put on an island’ and the metaphorical is ‘to isolate’. I think it’s definitely more attractive than common or garden ‘isolated’.
Pronunciation was much more interesting; all possibles could be found somewhere on the web. I guess that either:
there are really many ways of saying the word
different dialects pronounce it differently (very differently)
the word occurs in other languages
a lot of people pronounce it wrong.
The one I prefer is to say ‘isle’ in the usual way and add the ‘en’ to it, keeping the stress on the long i.
You’ll have to read the book to see the context the author uses it. I can recommend it as an easy, pleasant read with an unusual ending.
I’ve just finished reading 
For my late night reading lately I’ve been re-reading 
Recently I did a post on the words listed in 
I’ve just bought a lovely little book: A Conspiracy of Ravens compiled by 
The meat of the book is a series of glossaries of the words the author has gathered, in most of the 
e a m harris 
Light on the subject – but what kind?
Today I logged into Wordnik for the first time in many months. As you can guess, if you don’t already know it, Wordnik is about words – finding, gathering, listing, sharing, commenting.
Browsing through my collection I was reminded of the words I’d garnered in the past, including one of my favourites: lucubratory. This word has two meanings that may of may not be related. One is laborious or painstaking. The other is much more poetic; composed by candlelight or by night or pertaining to night studies.
A special word for composed by candlelight!
I imagine an old-time sage painstakingly writing out poems or music (or both – maybe he’s a singer/songwriter) by the light of a guttering and smelly candle; which is all he can afford until people recognise his genius and reward him accordingly. Preferably while he’s still around to enjoy it.
Are there words for composed by torchlight or electric-light? Do we need them?
Composed by moonlight is a beautiful thought: shall we call it lunabratory? I suspect even a determined sage would find it difficult to see well enough by the moon alone.
Perhaps fairies compose by firefly light, and mermaids by deep-sea squid light.
On a more serious note, is writing or composing affected by the kind of light used? Do candles encourage the romantic and halogen the aggressive? I think it likely to have an effect, but I also think it would be both individual and very subtle.
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