amber words

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abetting too, though I was reminded of it just now by seeing it alone!

pique has two separate applications, but little more. Might it count?

dander is like haw for me: mostly, it stands alone. betwixt too, to a lesser degree.

Does zoot qualify? It never had a much of separate existence, though OED2 does list zoot-shirt and zooty.

Wouldn't that be great? A knell of joy. :-)

Ha. I read (and dare I say enjoyed) that poem at university but no, memorisation was not required.

Even here though the sense is of departure, death. Could one, for example have a knell of joy?

yarb: Guess you didn't have to memorize Gray's "Elegy' in school then?

Elegy written in a Country Churchyard

THE Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

and on, for many more stanzas .....

Knoll is not an amber word for me, nor I suspect for other non-American post-Kennedy English speakers. Knell, on the other hand, is fossilised in "death knell".

I'm adding knoll to this list because it seems to me that, ever since November 1963, it is inextricably linked to the adjective grassy.

Quite so. Tough list--I love the challenge!

I've seen haw used to designate a kind of shrub; also, given the prevalence of the term "to off s.o." in the context of assorted TV reality shows of the "Survivor" genre, I reluctantly rejected "offing" as it could now plausibly appear in sentences such as "who are the WAAMU tribe offing this week?"

How about fritz, as in "on the fritz"? Then there's haw ("hem and haw"), offing ("in the offing"), and umbrage ("take umbrage").

how about trollop? perhaps brazenness is already intrinsic to trollopdom.


considered, but not included gibbous, briny, fatted, scruff, because I have seen these words refer to something other than the moon, the deep, a calf, or one's neck, though rarely. Similarly, unsung.

on the fence about reflux, nitty, beck

I prefer to use hussy by itself, and pair brazen with harlot. I believe I first saw the latter paired in a Clive Cussler novel.

You're right, even if I still think that brazen & hussy go together like rama lama ding dong.

How about wreak?

Escutcheons only come with blots.

I'm guessing you are thinking of 'brazen hussey', but since brazen shows up in other contexts, e.g. 'to brazen it out', I don't think it's eligible. 'Hearth' doesn't seem like a word that occurs in only one phrase. I'm on the fence about 'hale'.

Neat list!

brazen, hither/thither, hale, betwixt, hearth, flotsam, brimstone?

In some sense, simply being on this list should imply that no further explanation of the word in question is necessary, because the reader should be able to associate it immediately with the single expression in which it occurs, obviating the need for further explication.

if you know what i mean..