Dictionary of the Rare, Creative, and Beautiful: Words for Writers, Poets & Dreamers

Dictionary of the Rare, Creative, and Beautiful is part dictionary, part portable, selective, and curated encyclopedia. This book offers a window into the breadth and depth of human experience and imagination, showcasing words with unique histories and meaning, or beauty of sound or appearance; others are esoteric and deep – or simply fascinatingly strange. Within are words and beautiful names such as: brontomantic, Denisovian, anacampserote, wildering, aprique, oneirogenic, circumundulate, chiromantic, tristisonous, umbratilous, obvolvent, Thulian pink, Thistlegorm, therocephalians, Fata Morgana Land, spumiferous, Panslavonian, and Muromian. Other categories of words, names, and terms are: Placenames (Pillars of Hercules, Arabia Felix, Doon Edin, Mare Tenebrosum & Riphean Mountains); Zoology (quill pig, pink fairy armadillo & frantling); Astronomy (Eddington luminosity, Venusian, Silurian hypothesis, Jovian trojans & Kreutz sungrazers); Geopolitics (Perfidious Albion & Baltoscandia); History (Sahelian kingdoms, sunlit uplands & Groom of the Stool); Geometry (Penrose stairs & Villarceau circles); Anatomy (brain sand & frantling); Archeology (Oldenburg Horn& Nebra sky disc); Plus nautical, poetic, and literary terms like: brave west winds & naufragous; person from Porlock & the cavalier poets; the Lost Generation &Erewhonian. Also select slang words, such as: tactical chunder, snoutfair, molly wop, ghostshipping & grundle. And interesting phrases like: bring owls to Athens; Et in Arcadia ego; dolce far niente;and up the wooden hills to bedfordshire. This is the third dictionary from Robin Devoe. The first – Dictionary of the Strange, Curious and Lovely – is a collection of the 3500 “coolest” words in the English language. The second – Epic English Words – includes the best 10% or so of that 3500, and also interesting names and terms from diverse scientific, artistic, and literary fields. So moonglade, nemorous & brontide; and so too Devonian, Muspelheim, Shambhala & Avalon are included in Epic English Words. This book – Dictionary of the Rare, Creative, and Beautiful – is similar to Epic English Words except it includes almost all new entries. Each volume stands alone and if you like one, you will probably like all three. (Subsequent to this book, Robin Devoe published two more volumes: Words of Wonder (a collection of only the best selections from all Robin Devoe dictionaries); and Dictionary of the Strange, Epic, and Beautiful (almost the entirety of all the dictionaries combined in one 511-page volume).