Dear unnamed author:

[conuly]

I get that you have a favorite word. However, you probably shouldn't use it as often as you do. "Glowing" would be a less intrusive synonym, or "gleaming". Also, the first time you used it, you should've defined it. Your readers think "lambent" means "sheep-like". Depend on it.

Comments

[crystalpyramid]

Like a crooked sheep, right?

[conuly]

Baaa.

[tielan]

Now I'm worried... :D

[conuly]

She manages to refrain from referring to their lambent eyes as orbs, at least. I think the author just really likes this one word.

[readerjane]

Hah. Reminds me of the time I misread the word "lambic" as "iambic", and then couldn't figure out what iambic beer was.

[moon_custafer]

Beer that makes you walk with a staggered gait?

[gominokouhai]

E. E. Doc Smith by any chance?

[conuly]

No.

[rebeccmeister]

Sounds like Author needs a good Editor! :^)

[workday_dreamer]

Maybe the author is just relying on their average reader having played a lot of Gears Of War games when they were younger :P

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"Your readers think "lambent" means "sheep-like". Depend on it."

Oh, surely not; but if they do, they've only themselves to blame. 'Lambent' is a perfectly good English word - not archaic, not a loan-word from some other language, not tricky to either spell or pronounce - there's no reason the author should have to define it. One may presume that young readers frequently encounter words they haven't seen before; if they can't guess the meanings from context, the dictionary is only a click away.

True that 'lambent' has a fairly narrow range of usage - it applies specifically to firelight flickering over metal, and as a compliment to a certain style of wit. 'Glowing', 'gleaming, 'flashing' and 'luminous' are none of them truly synonymous, but are probably better choices if the author's not talking about either lambent flames or lambent wit.

Baaa.

[conuly]

Of course it's a loanword, it comes from Latin.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

I'll grant you that one, because apparently it didn't appear in English until the 17th century - a whole lot of new words got shanghaid into English between Elizabeth I and Victoria. I would say anything borrowed from Latin much before, say, Henry VIII doesn't count as a loan-word any more, because English wasn't yet modern English at that time; nearly half French, and French was more than half Latin to begin with.

At any rate, if 'lambent' has been part of English usage for over three centuries, there is no need for a writer to define it when using it, because it's been defined in every (unabridged) English dictionary that anyone now living has ever seen, including their great-grandfather's huge tome that they used to sit on at Thanksgiving dinner. It's not a recent loan-word, like 'waifu' or 'hijab' or 'pho' (which some would say are not English at all, but if they're commonly used by millions of people who only speak English, what else could they be?)

[conuly]

Age isn't the issue, frequency is. I don't think lambent is in such common usage that you can expect your readers to know it without even giving them a little hint. The first time it popped up - and such a rare word really shouldn't pop up so many times when there are common synonyms available and the writer doesn't use any other rather unusual words, but that's another issue - the author should've spent a few words on how the eyes were lambent like something that we more frequently expect to glow softly. Eyes don't really do that outside of books and cats - and cats eyes only shine with reflected light, they don't do it out of nowhere in a totally dark room with no candlelight or moon!

In fact, here's the ngrams viewer for lambent and two other words, streamline and shrivel.

I picked streamline and shrivel because they appear on the far right of the first test your vocab sorting quiz, which indicates that they're not that frequently used (but not quite so rare as uxoricide). You and I have a pretty damn good vocabulary, and I bet you know all the words on that first test already, but most speakers don't know as many as we do. The more you read, the more words you learn, but I think it's fair to give your readers some context for unusual words, especially if you're using them in a rather odd context, like calling eyes "glowing" but using "lambent" instead. Eyes glow all the time in fiction, but it's still not the first word that springs to mind when I think of them! (Well, unless we're talking about cats, see above.)

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Interesting test - I was surprised to see so many words I didn't know; that doesn't often happen. It estimated my vocabulary at 39,700 words. LOL, of course I immediately looked up the words I hadn't known, so it's a little bigger now.

'Lambent' isn't the right word for eyes, unless they're dragon-eyes or something, that glow with their own shifting light. The tapetum in animals' eyes reflects light, but doesn't produce it, and the reflected light doesn't flicker. Seems like the problem here isn't that the word is unusual, but that it's being misused; thrown in because the writer thinks it sounds eldritch, not because it's the precise word required.

LOL, it's true that eyes glow all the time in fiction. It's like bosoms heaving and quivering; not meant to be taken literally unless other eldritch shit is also going down.

[conuly]

Interesting test - I was surprised to see so many words I didn't know; that doesn't often happen. It estimated my vocabulary at 39,700 words. LOL, of course I immediately looked up the words I hadn't known, so it's a little bigger now.

Likewise on all counts!

'Lambent' isn't the right word for eyes, unless they're dragon-eyes or something, that glow with their own shifting light.

Oh, no, they are a supernatural creature whose eyes, I presume, glow with their own shifting light. But it's not fair to assign that word to eyes without defining it. Like I said in my post, if nothing else the author ought to have varied it with "glowing" and "gleaming". (She ought to have done it anyway. The word is too unusual to merit the level of times she used it over two books.)

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

At least, if she kept using it over and over without defining it, the sharper of her readers would eventually look it up out of sheer irritation.

I took the test again, because I remembered two of the words I'd missed ('cantle' and 'captious') and that changed my score to 42,300. Therefore, I call 'bullshit' on the entire test, because it assumes that knowing just two more words means I actually know 2600 more words. I also note that it doesn't care whether or not one knows the correct definition of a word: there were a few I didn't count because I wasn't quite positive.

Did you ever read Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun series? Boy howdy, is that a vocabulary-stretcher! Totally full of words you'll never see anywhere else, and he doesn't define them either; it's both brilliant and maddening.

[conuly]

Therefore, I call 'bullshit' on the entire test, because it assumes that knowing just two more words means I actually know 2600 more words.

The test estimates that if you know one or two words in this rarity, you know more words in that rarity.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

I know it does, but their sample size is way too small for their results to be meaningful.