Wordie: Amaranthine: Comments

Comment by Milosrdenstvi, about 1 month ago

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:02:38 +0000

What time the poet hath hymned
The writhing maid, lithe-limbed,
Quivering on amaranthine asphodel,
How can he paint her woes,
Knowing, as well he knows,
That all can be set right with calomel?

-- Bunthorne, the Aesthetic Poet, in W.S. Gilbert's Patience

Comment by knitandpurl, 2 months ago

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 14:40:55 +0000

"But in order that I should not be disappointed by the words that I should hear uttered by a person who called herself Mme de Guermantes, even if I had not been in love with her, it would not have sufficed that those words be shrewd, beautiful, and profound, they would have had to reflect that amaranthine colour of the closing syllable of her name, that colour which on first seeing her I had been disappointed not to find in her person and had fancied as having taken refuge in her mind."

--The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, Revised by D.J. Enright, p 280 of the Modern Library paperback edition

Comment by mollusque, 10 months ago

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 19:39:05 +0000

Thanks oroboros! I hadn't heard of antanaclasis and it's close to what I seek. The only difference seems to be that in antanaclasis the word with a double meaning is repeated. I'd been toying with polysemy also, but that seems to refer to different meanings in different contexts. Maybe what I want is "merged antanaclasis" or "simultaneous polysemy".

Comment by oroboros, 10 months ago

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 17:32:22 +0000

Mollusque:

"It is indeed a kind of pun called the ANTANACLASIS (an-ta-NA-cla-sis), or double entendre. Not the joking, play-on-words kind of pun, the antanaclasis strikes a rhetorical chord, causing the word to vibrate with its double meaning -- a bicorn, if you will."

--From: Ask Figaro (figarospeech.com)

Comment by seanahan, 11 months ago

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 05:55:57 +0000

The closest I can think of would be to say bon mot, but it doesn't describe this specific situation.

Comment by mollusque, 11 months ago

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 03:54:17 +0000

In The Last Unicorn, Peter Beagle described the unicorn as having amarathine eyes. This uses both meanings of amarathine simultaneously (undying and a purple color) without it being a pun or zeugma. Is there a word for this literary device?